FIRST LITERARY REVIEW-EAST

MAY 2011

In this issue, we celebrate Mothers the world over  - - from Brooklyn, New York to the Catskills upstate, from India to Tehran, Iran. In response to our call for submissions for Mother’s Day, the poems ran the gamut … from childhood remembrances, to forgiveness (or non-forgiveness), to a recognition that our mothers cannot live forever, except in our memories. This issue is dedicated to my special mom - - who, although she is not my birth mother, she is (as my poem says), “the realest of mothers.”     -Cindy Hochman, Editor-in-Chief 

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low fog --
another motherless
Mother's Day

the worst thing --
realizing I could live
without her

mothers and daughters:
my brokenness
my healing

                                         -Judy Kamilhor

(the first two haiku are from the poet's chapbook, The Magic Show, 2009, published by bbgods productions, her micropoetry publishing company.)

Judy Kamilhor is a grateful member of Brevitas, the short poetry email group, and a frequent contributor to CLWN WR. Her micropoetry can be found on her blog: http://kamihaiku.blogspot.com

 

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I Used To Play This Game With My Mother

She would throw knives forks spoons dishes
I would run and hide singing at the top of my lungs
You can't catch me
The dining room table stands on a slant
She did catch me

                                                                 -Ice Gayle Johnson

Ice Gayle Johnson is a multi-media artist with work published in a variety of anthologies and, most recently, in Poetry in Performance anthology, City College.  Feature profile with Stay thirsty media.com was published recently.  Please check it out! www.Staythirstymedia.com / highlight Ice Gayle Johnson - - it includes two tracks from her CD, poems on images. She lives between Chicago and New York.  She is a founding editor of Uphook Press, and she travels and performs on all coasts.

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Deadly Lull

God is quiet, but not
as quiet as your mother,

father said, after we have
a row. I think I can hear

God in the way the wind
whistles through the trees.

It could be Him making that noise.
But I can't hear or guess

what torture she's planning
for me. Not execution

by gunfire, because that
would be too noisy - I

could hear the bullets coming.

                                                -Hal Sirowitz

Hal Sirowitz is the author of four books of poetry, with a fifth one forthcoming from Backwaters Press in Nebraska. He has been published in Used Furniture Review, Vanitas, Manhattan Review, etc.

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We all become our mothers

Perhaps I would do it differently,
I always thought when I heard
the tide of my mother's displeasure pour
into pores of my teenage rebellion.

The rolling of the eyes, right to left,
At dirty dishes strewn like dead squirrels
outside notorious high schools. The finger
test for sprinkles of dust as if they were ashes

of dead crustaceans spilling through hell.
Traditions mummified in every breath, a beetle
chasing perfection, defoliating stems of time
until her health was reduced to bare bones.

Wearing my belly button ring of defiance,
I made sure as the sun burning the east
every morning that my ears were like rocks -
impermeable and calcified, with no room

for ants, just moss of impetuousness.
I believed nomadic life would be settling.
Nauseous my pen would feel if I ever bled
it to tattoo a permanent address next to my name.

I wake up,
fifteen years and hundred fifty arguments later,
in my apartment at 6:00 a.m. to the smell
of lemon Pledge and a view of Sirius staring,
every winter night. Minutes synchronized. With
fine china reflecting the shadow of my genes,
I concede: the larva comes from the infallible egg.

                                                                              -Sweta Srivastava Vikram

Sweta Srivastava Vikram (www.swetavikram.com) is a two times Pushcart nominated-poet, novelist, author, essayist, columnist, educator, and blogger, whose musings have translated into four chapbooks of poetry, two collaborative collections of poetry, a fiction novel, and a nonfiction book of prose and poems (upcoming in 2012). Her scribbles have also appeared in several anthologies, literary journals, and online publications across six countries in three continents. Taj Mahal Review describes Sweta as "A poet with hauntingly beautiful talent." A graduate of Columbia University, she lives and writes in New York City and reads her work across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Sweta also teaches creative writing workshops. Follow her: On Twitter (@ssvik) or Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/Words.By.Sweta)

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For my mother

Only the "Kindness"
can stay awake all night
and lay a cool tissue
on a fevered forehead.

Only the "Kindness"
can become jaded and worn out
but still, keep nursing someone else .

Only the "Kindness"
can bring God to words
not from beyond the clouds
but through the Mother's eyes.

                                                 -Soufi Mostafavi

Soufi Mostafavi studies Japanese language in University of Tehran . She is also an English teacher in a language institute. Her first book of poetry,"Poet of Dandelions", was published when she was only 9 years and was short-listed as the best poetry book of the year among adults. This poem, "Kindness", is from the same book and belongs to her childhood. Soufi's poems and paintings have appeared in many paper and e-magazines and once was Editor's Choice in the Indian e-magazine, Kritya.

[Editor's Note:  Next up, read a poem by the mother of the poet above!]

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For my daughter

Not with the milk
coursing through my breast
but with the sap
singing in my unwritten poems
did I feed you.

Long nights,
until the glowing of dew
on every lonely leaf;
I was from head to toe
a pair of open eyes,
to cool your fever
simmering the sea of my words .

Long days,
closing the white notebook
of my desirous moments,
I followed your tottering steps
in the parks and playgrounds
to reach the unreachable dandelions.

Every morning
breaking the pure silence of sunrise,
with the noise of the juicer
I exchanged my poetic fervor
with the worrying chart of your weight and height.

The once flourishing tree of my inspiration
dried up
and the yellow leaves of my look
desperately fell on the windows of bookshops
eyeing the latest books of poetry.

Oh! daughter of my despairing desires!
Tell me
other than your blossomy smile
and limpid waterfall of your hair
flowing into the lost sea of my youth,
which poem,
will quench the thirsty desert
of my endless loneliness?

                                          -Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi
                                           (Edited by Surya Rao)

Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi is an Iranian poet, translator and freelance journalist. Her poems appear in the anthologies Letters to the World, Contemporary Women Poets of Iran and Anthology of Best Women Poets. She is the author of Eternal Voices: Interviews with Poets East and West, and The Last Night with Sylvia Plath: Essays on Poetry. In addition, she has translated: Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot, Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life by Ian Gibson, Anthology of Contemporary African Poetry, Selected Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, Women Poets of the World, Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry, Selected Poems of Iaroslav Seifert, Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life, Blood of Adonis by Samuel Hazo, The Beauty of Friendship: Selected Poems by Khalil Gibran Selected Poems by Blaga Dimitrova. Her new book is the Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry.
 

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Lily Of The Valley

In the summer when I was little,
we went to a bungalow in the Catskills,
taking my hand my mother led me through
the piney woods that were all around,
teaching me how to know the flowers,
pink mountain laurel grows in clumps
orange jack-in-the pulpit sticks out a black tongue
thin as the point of a pencil,
lily of the valley was her favorite,
fragile white bells swing on a leafy green string.

Fifty years later, in the midst of a heat wave,
I drift like a weed through rank city gutters, steamy and vast,
but her cool fingers still curl over mine, holding fast.

                                                                      -Tsaurah Litzky

Tsaurah Litzky feels so privileged to be a poet. She started writing poetry when she was seven. Since then, she has published twelve poetry chapbooks, as well as one major collection, "Baby On The Water" - Long Shot Press.

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Painting With My Mother

My mother paints angels with long torsos and skinny faces,
their expressions vague like the margins of her favorite books,
which she fills with fragmented thoughts about heaven and art.

She whistles as she drifts from easel to bookshelf, perching
momentarily at points throughout the trip, collecting
artifacts and inspiration from unlikely corners of the room.

The space is ever changing, rearranging like works of art
that never crystallize until the final stroke, when artist completes
the journey through a moment that was born to have no end.

Her facial lines reveal a masterpiece, a mystery, a deepening story
that threatens to give away too much, too soon. So we paint:
reds, yellows, oranges, blues, extraordinary life in ordinary hues.

                                                                         -Hope Koppelman

Hope Koppelman has been writing since the age of five, when she began dictating stories to her mother who typed them on the family's typewriter. She completed her first 24-chapter novel, "New Girl," at the age of twelve. Today she lives in Orlando , Florida where she spends her free time writing about the evolution of spirit and the laws of personal growth. "Writing is the most solid thing in my life; it's my bridge between matter and spirit, conscious and subconscious, life and the great unknown. I would be unbalanced, disconnected, misaligned without a framework for my thoughts, a structure to the madness, a map of my own creativity."

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Rock N Roll

"Help Me Rhonda"
came on the clock radio and mom
knocked on my door,
walked in, dropped an arm
full of laundry
and grabbed my hand. She rolled
her shoulders, shook hips,
whirled around me and fell
back on my bed
out of breath and laughing
like a girl
in the front seat of a cadillac
with hot winds
rippling back long black hair.

                                                         -Tony Gloeggler

(previously published in Pearl)

Tony Gloeggler is a native of NYC and currently manages a group home for developmentally disabled men in Brooklyn. His work has been in numerous anthologies and journals. His chapbook, ONE ON ONE, received the 1998 Pearl Poetry Prize, and ONE WISH LEFT, a full-length collection, was published by Pavement Saw Press in 2002. MY OTHER LIFE was published by Jane Street Press in 2004, and GREATEST HITS came out from Pudding House Publications in 2009. THE LAST LIE was put out by NYQ Books in 2010.

 

[Editor's Note:  I will have the distinct privilege of reading with Mr. Gloeggler in August at Space on White - - I hope you will all be there!]     -CH

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Map

A diamond chip,
reflecting New England snow
finds its way into the cleft of my daughter's strong nose.

How much more beautiful can she get?

An open winged book
tattooed with California colors
perches on my daughter's strong ankle.

A lover's chain
hammered with grit from Manhattan's Lower East Side
embraces my daughter's strong neck.

Before she mapped out her world
I knew her beauty first.

                                                                   -Vicki Iorio

Vicki Iorio's work can be seen in Uphook, Mobius, Performance Poets Literary Review and Poems Towards Forgiveness. She hangs around tattoo parlors and tea houses. And yes, she is a Mother!

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Three weeks with mom

This last week I finally
limited myself to two
two-word responses:
"I'm sorry."
"Oh, really?"

Had I only known.
Would have made
the first two weeks
so much easier.

Not to mention my adolescence.
And the last forty years.

                                          -Richard Storm

(previously published in the 7th Annual Brevitas Anthology)

Richard Storm moved from Portland, Oregon to Manhattan in 1978, and has lived in Hell's Kitchen for many years.
He believes that poetry need not be obscure to be poetic, and he lives in constant fear of becoming the gay
Andy Rooney.
 

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Closest to the Bone (an excerpt)

I.

My pockets are emptied. My face is scarlet yet refuses to bloom. What do I have but a baker's dozen of words from a dry pen and the dust from my mouth? CAUTION: Like Oz, not all of this is pretty. But my heart and hand are affixed to a pure white Bible. And the truth will set us in free verse, even if not in stone.

Hallmark be damned! This is our story and we're sticking to it!!

The closer to the bone
the sweeter the meat

II.

Virtuouso of mothers! (Brava!)
Donald Trump of Mothers! ("You're fired!")
Imelda Marco-witz of Mothers! (Can I borrow those shoes, ma?)
Mama Mia of Mothers!
Lenox China of Mothers! (You are the most graceful swan of all!)
Plush cushion of Mothers! (I have often fallen back into your soft rooms)
Realist of mothers - - REALEST of mothers!!!

III.

Small lady in one tough package, such a hard act to follow. Tiny feet with bunions and yet I stumble over your wide, capable footsteps.

Mama, you have given me everything. Your AA batteries, your bedroom, your blankets, your cereal, your feistiness, your lampshade hat, your money, your soap, your socks, your sweetness, your Tilapia, your underwear, your white peaches, your wisdom. YOUR ACCESS-A-RIDE! You've given me your all. Now tell me, what can I give you?  (I know, I know, NACHAS!*)

(*In Yiddish, "nachas" means joy, pleasure, and gratification - - and you don't have to be Jewish to understand that!!)

                                                                                               -Cindy Hochman

OK, OK, so I included my own poem in my own journal - - but at least I had the humility to put it last!!

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KAREN AND I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS SPECIAL MOTHER'S DAY ISSUE - - IF YOU DID, DON'T BE SHY - - TELL US!