FIRST LITERARY REVIEW-EAST
NOVEMBER 2024
hold your tears gently
rest now, my dear warriors
the sun’s coming up
—Geoff O’Keeffe, 11.06.24 0500 h
Geoff Shōun O'Keeffe is an undisciplined and sporadic amateur writer, a father of three, a grandfather of three, and the Executive Director of Zen Peacemakers. Geoff is a Dharma Holder in the White Plum lineage of Zen Buddhism. Geoff publishes in Substack under O'Keeffe Woodworks. No actual wood has been harmed in this endeavor.
Two brown rabbits
frolic on the green grass
of Auschwitz.
After a brief shot in Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985)
—Joel Allegretti
Joel Allegretti is the author of, most recently, Platypus (NYQ Books, 2017), a collection of poems, prose, and performance texts, and Our Dolphin (Thrice Publishing, 2016), a novella. He is the editor of Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015). The Boston Globe called Rabbit Ears “cleverly edited” and “a smart exploration of the many, many meanings of TV.”
is this what it’s like
at the end, alone
and wondering
is this what it’s like
at the end,
the old monk wondered.
That is perfect,
the poet said
to himself.
Perfect.
—Tom Montag
Tom Montag is a middlewestern poet who wouldn’t have much to write about if he couldn’t read upside-down, didn’t eavesdrop shamelessly in small-town cafés, and did listen to the voices in his head. The “old monk” is one of those latter ones. Seventy at Seventy and The River Will Tell You are his most recent books of poetry.
Three Haiku
poems swell, buoyant,
inflated with joy until
editors prick them
brooms sweep out our webs
spiders scuttling back to work—
poets reweaving
so few words remain
contained, constrained, their meaning
hai(ku)ding in cracks
—Margaret D. Stetz
Margaret D. Stetz is the Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Delaware.
Curl, Sandbagged
A sedentary dog arrives sniffing
at the side door, possibly to see if
the wings the door bears have be-
come inelastic from that dip in the
bay this morning. Or, perhaps, some
icy hurricane blowing up from the
Southern Ocean might have left a
fanciful trail of avoirdupois in its
wake that will give some weight
to the parallel conceit that the fog
may equally come on big dog feet.
—Mark Young
Mark Young's most recent books are Melancholy, a James Tate Poetry Prize winner, published by SurVision Books (Ireland) in March 2024; the May 2024 free downloadable pdf to your scattered bodies go from Scud Editions (Minnesota); & One Hundred Titles From Tom Beckett, with paintings by Thomas Fink, published by Otoliths in June, 2024. His The Magritte Poems will be coming out from Sandy Press later this year.
Teas Drip
I love airplanes because I feel free above clouds. Years ago, on the way to Japan, they served rosehip tea which reminded me of the rose garden where I met my husband more than five decades ago—roses of every color and fragrance. He on his knees handing me a bud as he said, ‘a bud for a buddy.’ I still remember the felt sweetness in my nose and in my heart—touching moments live forever.
Teas drip from rosebud
Like drops on plane window
I want to be free.
—Diane Raab
Diana Raab, MFA, PhD, is a memoirist, poet, speaker, and award-winning author of fourteen books of poetry and nonfiction. Her writings have been published and anthologized worldwide. Her latest book is Hummingbird: Messages from My Ancestors. (Modern History Press, January 2024). She writes for Psychology Today, The Wisdom Daily, and Thrive Global and is a guest writer for many others. Visit her at: dianaraab.com.
Between the wall and the sandier bank
of the river, you don't care about me,
magpie intently among the supple branches
to your care. But when on the balcony
show off your steps and your plumage,
impeccable balance to the line
rusty with this worn paint
at home, at my first glance at you suddenly
flee, carving frictions of sounds in the air
that fall at my feet like waste
of atmosphere and slivers of derision.
—Erika Dagnino
Literature, music, drawing, and writing are deeply intertwined in the artistic activity of Erika Dagnino. She has collaborated with various poets and musicians in performance, as well as literary and cultural magazines. She is a longtime educator at state educational institutions. She comes from and lives in Italy. Further information can be found on her website: www.erikadagnino.it
In A Dark Chair
I write in blood
you took from me
a long time ago—
the body doesn’t forget
those things
worse than any
knife wound
could make
I screamed like a devil
had taken up residence
while you huddled
in a dark chair
waiting for more
of the same
—Susan Isla Tepper
Susan Isla Tepper is a poet, fiction writer, and playwright. www.susantepper.com
Into the Land of Nod
Genesis 2:15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden
of Eden to dress it and to keep it
I’m used to dirt and sand, blue secrets
floating on an overflowing river.
This journey is hot with salvation,
voices drone, a blood buzz
oblivious to the mute squawk of police radios
and shattered glass.
We’re all close, too close; not tight enough,
she coughs my way.
This is sex. This is sin.
This is enlightenment by degree.
—Alex Stolis
[from the poet’s chapbook Into the Land of Nod]
Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis; he has had poems published in numerous journals. Two full length-collections, Pop. 1280 and John Berryman Died Here, were released by Cyberwit and are available on Amazon. His chapbook, Postcards from the Knife-Thrower's Wife, was released by Louisiana Literature Press in 2024, RIP Winston Smith from Alien Buddha Press 2024, and The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres, 2024 by Bottlecap Press.
Priscilla (no. 160 of Women’s names sensual series)
When she is married
to a hot, burning star,
a commanding presence,
a sexy present to the entire world,
her perfect companion
is loneliness.
By leaving him behind,
she joins the world at last,
finally becoming the commander
of her own life.
—Carrie Magness Radna
Born in Norman, Oklahoma, Carrie Magness Radna is an archival audiovisual cataloger at the New York Public Library, a singer, a lyricist-songwriter, and a poet who loves to travel. Her latest book is Shooting Myself in the Dark (Cajun Mutt Press, 2022). She lives with her husband, Rudolf, in Manhattan.
Public Transport Fugue
A woman on the bus
licks her glass lips.
They taste slightly
of her husband. Anything
else would be a sin.
The glass windows
rattle. The bus slides past
retail sins to tempt
her lips. Winterspring fog
keeps her cool and firm.
The cord slightly tickles
her finger. A bell sounds
like broken glass. She hides
her sins behind a fixed smile.
She has no choice. None.
—Mark J. Mitchell
Mark J. Mitchell has been a working poet for 50 years. He is the author of five full-length collections and six chapbooks. His latest collection is Something To Be from Pski’s Porch Publishing. A novel that includes some poetry, A Book of Lost Songs, is due out next spring. He’s fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Dante, and his wife, activist Joan Juster. He lives in San Francisco, where he points out pretty things.
Remembering Max Beckmann’s The Egyptian, 1942
Degenerate dreams of the oriental queen
invade the industrious body,
overwhelm with Nile mysteries,
lighted from below, those burrowing
pitted olives for eyes,
crescent hair divide and that washed necklace
of gentleman visitor inexactness;
Beckmann really pulled the apes from the zoo
with The Egyptian, 1942 was a defeatist’s shrug
in years, the colour drained away as through
an impossible sieve, and still, we remember
that cinched drape of blue – that ballast of a chin,
forged from a craft and control only known
to vagabond masters.
—Ryan Quinn Flanagan
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada, with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.
Big Geology
Rocks move slowly in this landscape;
change over eons,
erupt, pile up, split, cascade,
form mountains and basins over endless time.
Through upheaval they get their colors
of orange, gray, and black.
Through force they take shape as cliffs,
or a rift between continents
Few plants and animals live here,
and the ones that do—
dandelions, moss campion, arctic foxes—
are made minuscule by geology.
—Thaddeus Rutkowski
Thaddeus Rutkowski is the author of eight books, most recently Safe Colors, a novel in short fictions. He teaches at Medgar Evers College and Columbia University and received a fiction writing fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.
The Rabbit
A rabbit rests in the grass,
his haunches flattened against the ground,
until he rises all at once, jumps and turns,
shows me the pale stripes on his side,
light brown on dark.
He freezes, then shifts suddenly,
ears erect, twitching every now and then,
standing guard.
He is so naked in his natural fur,
so small, contained and poised,
in a world full of cats,
the crushing weight of cars,
owls swooping down in darkness.
—Laura Rutland
Laura Rutland is a transplant from North Georgia to Erie, Pennsylvania. An Associate Professor of English at Gannon University, she retired in 2022 but continues to teach part-time. Her poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry DAILY, Poetry Breakfast, and The Anglican Theological Review, among others, and she has been a featured poet in Poets Hall Press: The Journal. Her fantasy poetry chapbook, A Dragon Woman’s Journey, was released in 2024.
The Touch of Ephemeral Wings
A dragonfly, pried from a sticky spider web
entrapment where she scraped air fruitlessly
hair-thin legs bore wet paper dabs, while
thousands of tiny lenses took me in
and me her: a “common whitetail anisoptera,”
black-striped translucent wing-pairs, with
a dragon-glare between. Now settled on open palm,
width of her wings matching the length of my hand.
She drags her flap-like labrum, nuzzle like tiny horse lips
over my palm, sucking water I dripped on my timeline.
Rarefied breathing-with tempo alignment,
my ribs expanding as her spiracles pulse.
Then she to a cushion of damp moss,
me to my nuzzled wording. Later,
missing from mossy rest, I envision her ‘copter-careening
around, that long tail keeping her keel.
—Mary Newell
Mary Newell authored the poetry chapbooks TILT/ HOVER/ VEER (Codhill Press) and Re-SURGE (Trainwreck Press, now from the author), poems in numerous journals and anthologies, and essays including “When Poetry Rivers” (Interim journal 38.3). She is co-editor of Poetics for the More-than-Human-World: An Anthology of Poetry and Commentary and the Routledge Companion to Ecopoetics. Newell (MA Columbia, BA Berkeley) received a doctorate from Fordham University with a focus on environment and embodiment in contemporary women’s writing. She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Connecticut, Stamford and intermittent online classes. Recording of a 2024 interview with the Brooklyn Rail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIIp-pbuSjM.
https://manitoulive.wixsite.com/maryn
Indoors
At night,
there are no trees,
no flowers.
The house next door
is lights in windows
but no roof,
no walls.
It’s cloudy out
but there are no clouds.
The world has moved indoors.
6 rooms.
Population 2.
—John Grey
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly, and Lost Pilots. Latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert, and Memory Outside The Head, are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa, and Shot Glass Journal.
Newborn
I am giving birth to my old age
delivering myself into a new calling
I am going to tell three people a day
something wonder-born about themselves
I will find them in the stores, on the
shores, even where their faces look
like battlefields between their wars and flashes
of their hope, I will celebrate the specks within
their eyes, their tiny mighty clues of proof of life
—Susan Shea
In the past year, Susan Shea made the full-time transition from school psychologist to poet. In that time, her poems have been accepted by publications that include Invisible City, Ekstasis, MacQueen's Quinterly, Feminine Collective, Amethyst Review, Green Silk Journal, Flora Fiction, Last Leaves, The Write Launch, The Gentian, Across the Margin, October Hill Magazine, Litbreak Magazine, Beltway Poetry, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Foreshadow, New English Review and others. Her work was recently nominated for Best of the Net.
Accept Death in a Cheerful Spirit
Sometimes slow
is the fastest way to go.
Forgetting
is often how we remember.
Marcus Aurelius was Emperor.
He made time for philosophy.
—Mike Wilson
Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in magazines including The Gravity of the Thing, Mud Season Review, The Petigru Review, Still: The Journal, and in Mike’s book, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic.
Bedside
When, at last, you sleep in the fretting cage of heat,
you dream of fires gnawing the mountains,
of the oldest trees burned alive, your face slick with sweat.
I tell myself an unkilling fever keeps us sane,
reins the body back inside our love for it.
Morning will arrive more brightly for this—
I say so, but that is only philosophy.
—James Owens
James Owens's newest book is Family Portrait with Scythe (Bottom Dog Press, 2020). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in Channel, Arc, Dalhousie Review, Queen's Quarterly, and Atlanta Review. He earned an MFA at the University of Alabama and lives in a small town in northern Ontario.
It's All About Me
What's happening here happens everywhere. We
all die. Do you see what I've done? By using
the plural, I let you feel included, though
in this equation, it's really me I care
about. Who the hell are you anyway? When
have you scratched my itch, the one I can't quite reach,
below my shoulder blade? And what about Paul
Celan, pilsners, vultures, etymology?
Diagnosis, despair, true love, opiates?
Sure, I want to share, but my death's a one-way
alley you can't access. It's all about me.
—Robert Okaji
Robert Okaji has late stage metastatic lung cancer, which he finds terribly annoying. He lives, for the time being, in Indianapolis with his wife—poet Stephanie L. Harper— stepson, and cat, and his first full-length collection, Our Loveliest Bruises, is forthcoming from 3: A Taos Press. His poetry may be found in Threepenny Review, Only Poems, Vox Populi and other venues.
Every Even—ing Has Its Singing
Every evening has its singing— its necessary silence; unexpected
chill.
Every evening has its turning— its closing or finishing;
Its covering up.
Every evening has its warm familiar comfort Just before fading music
leads into the fall ...
Dreams like scars are curving inward at the soul
as a single spider sits on a recessed mountain range.
Every evening has its turning star;
And its disappearance—
Its plans for the wounded animal in the woods.
Every evening has its favorite magazine or book, Its lamp just out of
reach.
—Gene Myers
Gene Myers is a reporter covering disability and mental health for Gannett, whose work appears in USA Today and newspapers across the country. He's also an entertainment writer, who gets to chat with folks like Steve Martin, Brandi Carlile, John Oliver, and Daryl Hall & John Oates. As a lit mag editor, he's had the privilege to publish poets such as Franz Wright, Anselm Berrigan, and Dara Barrois/Dixon (formerly Dara Wier), and has interviewed Jane Hirshfield, Charles Simic, and Coleman Barks, among others. His own poems have shown up in places like The Haiku Society of America's Frogpond journal, a broadside from Joshua Beckman’s 811 Books, Disco Prairie Social Aid & Pleasure Club by Factory Hollow Press, Paper Wasp, Chrysanthemum, A Handful of Stones, and the Irish Haiku Society's Shamrock Haiku Journal.
Neighborhood Cats
The mingled odors of pot smoke, tobacco, and freshly mown grass is nostalgic.
He somehow got where he was going, though no one knew how.
Let’s split this pop stand, man.
Steep stairs led the way, and they were icy in winter.
Suburbia is the ethical center of our great country.
Cats know it, they say it right to your face.
Day is desire and night is sleep.
I won’t be writing that particular hagiography.
Maybe I didn’t know enough when I took the pledge.
The attempt to be completely without affect usually falls flat.
All is not lost, only the most important parts.
The explosion made a breach in the former meaning of a swimsuit.
Folkloric musical traditions can’t be copyrighted.
Depending on your calculations, while the moon just goes on looking enigmatic.
—Ian Ganassi
Ian Ganassi’s work has appeared recently or will appear soon in journals such as New American Writing, SurVision, Home Planet News, and Peripheries, among many others. His first full-length collection, Mean Numbers, as well as his second collection (recently released), True for the Moment, are available online in the usual places. A third collection, By This Time, has just been published and is also available. Selections from an ongoing collaboration with a painter can be found at www.thecorpses.com. (We have recently made a commitment with a commercial gallery). Ian is a longtime resident of New Haven, Connecticut.
On finding peace
Empty notes bristle
in hearts
devoid of love
of music
she knows nothing
she is tone deaf
but syllables
sound forever
of birthday chimes
and bells
of thanksgiving
resonate
everywhere
with hymns of
love and gratitude.
—Ranu Uniyal
Ranu Uniyal is a bi-lingual poet from Lucknow, India. She has published four books of poetry and her work has appeared in Cha, Mascara, Cordite Poetry Review, Femina, Littlewood Press and several other journals across the globe. Her books include Across the Divide, December Poems, and The Day We Went Strawberry Picking in Scarborough. She also writes poetry in Hindi. ranuuniyal.com
THE EDITORS OF THIS FINE JOURNAL HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE NOVEMBER ISSUE AND WE WISH YOU A VERY HAPPY AND SAFE THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY!