Red Booth Review: August 2011

Red Booth Review • Volume 6: Issue 3. August 2011.

Juan Zapata, Jr.

Poems
1976 • David LaBounty
Three Poems • Howie Good
October • David Russomano
Two Poems • Lee Stern
In This Office • Mira Martin-Parker
Two Poems • Matthew Gasda
Harm's Way • David-Matthew Barnes
Poem Made of Sleep & Dreaming Head • Cheryl & Janet Snell
This Side Up & Claustrophobia • Cheryl & Janet Snell

Art
Two Photos • Brian Brown
In Her Room 2 • Jeff Foster
Only in Avalon • Juan Zapata, Jr.
Two Photos (Paris) • Laura Kazdan
Two Photos • Sarah Katharyna Kayss
I Love Paris in October • Soulis
Boat Yard • Merlin Flower

1976 • David LaBounty

I remember standing in my room at night, under the
ancient shelter of faraway gables

I remember the wonder of the transistor radio, playing in the
smallness of my once still hand

I remember the radiator, forever coiled against the
plaster of winter’s eternal wall

I remember how I was warmth, how I was the
potential for warmth

as the fog of my breath stained the
untroubled window

[+]

David LaBounty has held jobs as a miner, a mechanic, a reporter and a salesman. His work has appeared in Rattle, the Los Angeles Review, Booth, the New Plains Review, Night Train, SmokeLong Quarterly and other journals. His first collection of poetry will be released in the fall of 2011 from Elm Ridge Books.

Two Photos • Brian Brown

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Brian Brown is a documentary historian, photographer, and widely published poet, in Savannah, Georgia. Recent credits include Tulane Review, Clementine, Chiron Review, The Ottawa Citizen, Subliminal Interiors, as well as book covers for W. W. Norton and Dancing Moon Press. His website is Vanishing South Georgia.

Notes of a Very Minor Poet • Howie Good

1
Flood me, Lord, as they flood
played-out coal mines,
get Franz Wright to accept
my Friend Request,
but, first of all, answer the door.

Amen.

2
I don’t like cats,
but a dog might be good company.
I could take it on long walks,
feed it from my plate,
name it for a famous dead author.

3
You don’t get poetry.
The words are just words to you,

empty boots in the stirrups
of a riderless horse,

an unheard forecast for sunshine later.

[+]

Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWrite Books, 2010), and Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto, 2011), as well as numerous print and digital poetry chapbooks, including most recently Love Dagger from Right Hand Pointing, To Shadowy Blue from Gold Wake Press, and Love in a Time of Paranoia from Diamond Point Press.

October • David Russomano

The sound of feet through dry piled leaves.
Been picking things up. I think I talk
too much. It bothers me. Born
this month. A long conversation
about loss of faith. Four geese fly
overhead. Phone call, my brother’s voice
seems different miles away. Why is that
cluster of working hours called a shift?
“I am bored”, written twice in chalk.
Hypnotic windshield wiper motion.
A tree sprawled across our street,
red flares burn on pavement.
Transcendence could be quiet
evaporation, so different from clamorous
rain. Leaves on carpet and beer bottle caps.
Shadows different in the camera flash.
Street lamp makes drops of water
on the car window look like stars.
Dilemmas of worth. The smell
of cold air and car exhaust reminds me
of Athens. I remember collecting things
when I was younger. The collections didn’t
come to anything. All the while, trains went by.
No matter where you slept, the rumble and
warning whistles sounded close enough.

[+]

David Russomano studied abroad in Greece and India before graduating in 2006 with a BA in creative writing from Messiah College. His poetry has been featured in the online publications Write from Wrong and This Great Society. It is also scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of Women in REDzine. He currently teaches English in Turkey.

In Her Room 2 • Jeff Foster

[+]

Jeff Foster is living Missouri, doing art and photography since 2000. Influenced by Bosch,Wyeth, Klimt. On display in gallaries in Missouri and Kansas.

Poem Made of Sleep & Dreaming Head • Cheryl Snell & Janet Snell

This is the moment
you are most alone,
systems thudding blood,
breath stretching to a yawn.
A tear made of the day
escapes like the slow start of rain
and your fingers curl slightly.
Around what? Street sounds
doppler away, also refusing to be held.
There's no fear of the numbness
that creeps through you now,
let it come,
loosening muscle, thinning thought.
At this hour, the mind talks in riddles
its language a mystery
that leaves you
breathless, nightshirt pounding,
night broken by the same dreams
that have traveled so far to touch you.

[+]

[+]

Cheryl and Janet Snell are sisters who, in addition to their solo art and writing projects, collaborate on chapbooks for Scattered Light Library. Their most recent book is a collection of paintings and poems called That Feel.

This Side Up & Claustrophobia with Orange Cap • Cheryl Snell & Janet Snell

The way somersault
circles us, so long stuck.
We stir the air with a doll’s arm.

Oar, pull away. Breaker, tip us over.
Show the vantage point of the submerged
clouds wrong side up

Where we go who knows when
the knot gives way. Who, unlaced and dangling,
can almost see the ground.

[+]

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Only in Avalon • Juan Zapata, Jr.

[+]

Juan lives in NYC. His photography is geared towards singularity, whether it means loneliness, oddity or place; he strives to establish a presence for the ones already existent on his themes.

Two Poems • Matthew Gasda

The Not Inconsiderable

You eat peanut butter with a spoon for breakfast
The dreams you had last night were cruel
And the delirium blackens, the ridges of memory
Are like Braille you trace with your fingers, but can’t seem to spell out.
Monks hunched over in the scriptorium in your head,
Scribbling some parcel of praise for the not inconsiderable.

But you’re afraid you’ll think of her continuously
For twenty years now that the dreams have brought
Her back. You can’t fathom the sounding line in the
Liquid obscurity. Other people have such
Interesting things to say, but you don’t care, it
Seems so meaningless unaccompanied by pain.

[+]

Absence

You read the same page of a novel
twelve times; his favorite book, you can’t
bear to finish it anymore. The birch
trees line the road, night-blackened
but shining like husks of dying phosphorus
in the headlights. You
talk of giants, oceans, stars, nothing
but our own blood will make the dead speak,
and nothing can violate this sorrow, so
terribly have we been joined.
The wipers flick hail-stones onto the road...
There are unsayable things between us; that
we have been left alone. The smell
of hayfires and the sea. The dark ruin
in our loins. When a child goes
we have only each other.
This is the kind of grief that makes you whole.

[+]

Matthew Gasda is a poet living in NYC.

He is currently trying to raise money for his first book through Kickstarter.

Harm's Way • David-Matthew Barnes

Your father puffed too much PCP but he promised
to take you to the Great Pumpkin at the refinery
in Torrance where they painted the Union 76
oil tank with a black smile every October.

When he passed out behind the wheel,
the car slid over black gravel, heart-stopped
in the middle of the midnight field. Off
in the distance, the factory glowed orange.

It was too far to reach, so you cried for help,
shook his body, smashed your youth. Climbing
into his lap, you stretched your seven-year-old
foot to the metal and floored it to Grandma’s

in Gardena. There, you ate a broken ball
of caramel corn as a reward for being

such a good boy.

[+]

David-Matthew Barnes is the author of the novels Mesmerized, Accidents Never Happen, Swimming to Chicago, and The Jetsetters, published by Bold Strokes Books. He is also the author of over forty stage plays that have been performed in three languages in eight countries. His literary work has appeared in over one hundred publications including Review Americana, The Comstock Review, and The Southeast Review. He is the winner of the 2011 Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Award.

Two Poems • Lee Stern

Gods

The things we prayed to were called gods.
And we could only pray to them in the afternoon,
because the rest of the time they were busy with their own stuff.
They had big attention spans, though,
so you could fill up the hour, say, between two and three,
and be confident that most of your concerns
would be able to get through to them.
And they didn’t pick and choose whom they would listen to.
One person’s chances were as good as the next.
The only thing they insisted on was a certain amount of privacy
and a certain sense of decorum
that most people were able to pick up most of the time,
if even after only a few half-hearted attempts.
And you notice that I haven’t said
that all of the gods were able to solve all of our problems.
My experience is that it was about one in ten.
Maybe, if you were lucky, twenty percent.
But they were there for our benefit
even if, as I was told repeatedly on a number of discrete occasions,
we were sublimely there for theirs.

[+]

The Road to Bakersfield

The road to Bakersfield starts here
next to this empty lot.
But I’ve made it very clear
that going to Bakersfield isn’t at the top of my agenda.
If I have to go in the direction of Bakersfield,
let me keep my eyes closed when I get close to it.
And open them only when I can be assured that it’s passed.
I don’t know why I have this feeling about Bakersfield.
Maybe it reminds of something that somebody once told me.
I only know that if I have to go there, I’m going to be unhappy.
And probably end up saying things that I’ll regret.
I’ll probably end up thinking that the people of Bakersfield
have nothing to say to me of any consequence.
But expect me to bring all of my obligations with me.
And arrange them not for themselves that they may look at them,
but within the hours that relegate the quantitative edge of my sight.

[+]

Lee Stern lives in Los Angeles and tries to write a poem a day.

Two Photos (Paris) • Laura Kazdan

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Laura Kazdan lives in a basement with ambivalence in Brooklyn, NY. Her website is http://tellingallthetruethings.tumblr.com

Three Poems • Howie Good

Postwar

1
I climbed the thirteen stone steps. The sky was tilting from red toward black. You can’t find God if God doesn’t want to be found.

2
A man was strangling a woman on TV. My father said it’s OK if someone hits you to hit back. It was kind of good that our cat and dog had congruent philosophies.

3
I stayed up all night writing. I knew a lot of words. I should have been amazingly grateful. I wasn’t.

[+]

La Petite Mort
for Jones

1
I am to you as shadow
to shadowy blue,

and love is
the plump girl

who takes ballet
after school.

2
I have Mozart on.
All the windows are open.

From bushes and trees,
birds sing to each other,

sadly ambitious.

3
Animal noises in the night
and our bodies twisting together,
a kind of thunderstorm blue,

and then untwisting from within
like the surface of a mirror
rippled by a stranger’s breath.

[+]

Notes of a Very Minor Poet

1
Flood me, Lord, as they flood
played-out coal mines,
get Franz Wright to accept
my Friend Request,
but, first of all, answer the door.

Amen.

2
I don’t like cats,
but a dog might be good company.
I could take it on long walks,
feed it from my plate,
name it for a famous dead author.

3
You don’t get poetry.
The words are just words to you,

empty boots in the stirrups
of a riderless horse,

an unheard forecast for sunshine later.

[+]

Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWrite Books, 2010), and Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto, 2011), as well as numerous print and digital poetry chapbooks, including most recently Love in a Time of Paranoia from Diamond Point Press, Inspired Remnants from Red Ceilings Press and The Penalty for Trying from Ten Pages Press.

Two Photos • Sarah Katharina Kayss

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Sarah Katharina Kayss born in 1985 in Koblenz (Germany), holds a B.A. in History and Comparative Religion from Ruhr University of Bochum. Her artwork, prose and poetry had been published in literary magazines in Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Sarah edits the PostPoetry Magazine and she currently graduates in Modern History at King´s College, University of London.

Boat Yard • Merlin Flower

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Merlin Flower is an independent artist and writer.

In This Office • Mira Martin-Parker

berries rot in cups
boxes pile high
papers accumulate
cups of coffee grow cold

(They said I was creative.)

people come and go
phones ring
the sound of angry voices
messages are taken

(They said I was pretty.)

leaves on plants brown
envelopes and stationary
are restocked
pencils ordered

(They said one day)

computers crash
janitors empty wastebaskets
notes are taken
assignments given

(I would make something of myself, be someone.)

lunch time, the smell of food
men in suits arrive
business cards exchange
you enter

(When I'm older I'm going to travel, have money.)

mail piles up,
goes unanswered
accumulates on tables
spills onto the floor

(When I am older I want to)

recycling bins are emptied
deliveries made
you reappear
and leave again

(please tell me that when I am older I will)

files and folders
fill cabinets
fall behind desks,
are forgotten

(have a place, a beautiful place)

dust appears on shelves
on window panes
plant leaves turn brown
flowers fade

(and someone, please say there will be someone)

appointments are cancelled
announcements made
information requested
you pass quickly, in silence
distracted
not looking

(for me.)

[+]

Mira Martin-Parker is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State University. Her work has appeared in Diverse Voices Quarterly, Literary Bohemian, The Minetta Review, The Monarch Review, Mythium, Ragazine, Tattoo Highway, Yellow Medicine Review, and Zyzzyva.

I Love Paris in October • Soulis

[+]

Soulis is a mathematician. He loves photography and abstractions.