FIRST LITERARY REVIEW-EAST

Submissions Meet the Editor-in-Chief January 2018 March 2019 May/June 2021 Meet the Associate Editor July 2021 November 2019 January/February 2019 Book Review - Lyn Lifshin's "Ballroom" March 2020 September 2021 May 2020 Book Review: Amy Holman's Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window July/August 2018 Book Review: Kit Kennedy Reviews Heller Levinson September 2012 Book Review - Patricia Carragon Reviews Leigh Harrison November 2012 January 2020 March/April 2022 Book Review - Dean Kostos "Rivering" May 2013 Book Review: Hochman Reviews Ormerod Summer Issue 2013 September 2020 November/December 2018 McMaster Reviews Szporluk July/August 2014 November 2014 Book Review: Wright Reviews Gardner Stern Reviews Katrinka Moore May 2015 Hochman Reviews Ross July 2020 Tocco Reviews Simone September 2015 Simone Reviews Cefola May 2016 Bledsoe Reviews Wallace November 2016 January 2017 May 2017 Wehrman Reviews Dhar July 2017 September 2023 March 2018 May 2019 July 2019 September 2019 November 2023 March 2021 November 2021 WINTER 2022 Hochman Reviews Metras May 2022 November/December 2022 January/February 2023 March/April 2023 May 2023 July 2023



 

JULY/AUGUST 2018


 

Eve

She cut open the apple and found blood inside.

                                                                            
—Bob Heman

Bob Heman lives most of his life on the page. His words have been published on every continent except Antarctica, and have been translated into Spanish, Arabic, Farsi, Italian and Hungarian.

 


 

Pleasure

Jasmine, cashmere, sex, tart slurp
of clementine, the ocean’s spar-
kle. So much sple-
ndor; endless ways to lure
a person from the mind’s pure
abstraction into the senses’ sure-
to-end-at-some-point delight. Pause.
Savor. Let the world please
you. Don’t settle for pale,
idea-filled days. Let joy slap
you out of sleep.

                                                                —Alison Stone

Alison Stone has published four full-length collections, Dazzle  (Jacar Press, 2018), Ordinary Magic (NYQ Books, 2016), Dangerous Enough (Presa Press 2014), and They Sing at Midnight, which won the 2003 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Award; as well as three chapbooks. Masterplan, a book of collaborative poems with Eric Greinke, was recently published. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Barrow Street, Poet Lore, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been awarded Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize and New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin award. She was recently Writer in Residence at LitSpace St. Pete. She is also a painter and the creator of The Stone Tarot. A licensed psychotherapist, she has private practices in NYC and Nyack. www.stonepoetry.org  www.stonetarot.com




 

In the pith of wake

The wake of an ending                                                     
            laps hearts-edge
            nudges the tide toward shores
            where pebbles glisten salty

                                                        —Mary Newell    

Mary Newell lives in the lower Hudson Valley. She has taught literature and writing at the college level. Her poems were published in Spoon River Poetry Review, Hopper Literary Magazine, Earth’s Daughters, Chronogram, Written River, About Place, etc.

 


 

Spear-Fishermen
(Halászok)


day after day I watch
the men fishing in the sea
I feel like joining them
I envy their weightlessness
and the weightiness of their lives
every move they make
the way they dive into the unknown

                                                                   —Zoltán Böszörményi
                                                                     Translated from the Hungarian by Paul Sohar

Zoltán Böszörményi (1953–), a notable Hungarian poet, writer, and publisher born in Romania but now living in Canada and Barbados; two of his novels have also been published in Sohar’s English translation: Far from Nothing (Exile Editions, Canada, 2006) and The Club at Eddie’s Bar (Phaeton Press, Ireland, 2013). The Conscience of Trees, a selection of his poems in English, culled and translated from his numerous volumes of poetry, is slated for publication by Ragged Sky Press and is soon to be released.

 


 

Breathing with the Moon
(a fibonacci poem)

I
love
to walk
among those
million quiet thoughts,
and velvet whispered sounds of night.

                                                                    —Evie Ivy

Evie Ivy is a dancer/poet in the NYC poetry circuit. She hosts one of the longest-running poetry series, The Green Pavilion Poetry Event, in Brooklyn. Her latest book out is No, No Nonets … the Book of Nonets, available from Amazon.

 


 

Haiku

A praying mantis
snags a red salamander
off a lily pad.

                                        —Milton P. Ehrlich

Milton P. Ehrlich, Ph.D., is an 86-year old psychologist. A Korean War veteran, he has published numerous poems in periodicals such as Descant, Taj Mahal Review, Wisconsin Review, Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, Toronto Quarterly Review, Antigonish Review, Christian Science Monitor, Huffington Post, and The New York Times.

[Editors' Note: We thank Dr. Ehrlich for his service to our country.]

 


 

Nightcrawlers

Night thoughts writhe 
at the end of a line. 
Some inner fish will always 
take the bait, swimming up 
from black water 
to feed in the dark. 
No wonder you wake, 
weak and reeling, 
the scaly undead flopping 
in the bottom of the boat.

                                                        —Antonia Clark

Antonia Clark, a medical writer and editor, has also taught creative writing and manages on online poetry workshop, The Waters. She has published in numerous print and online journals, including 2River View, The Cortland Review, Eclectica, The Pedestal Magazine, and Rattle. Her poetry collections include Smoke and Mirrors and Chameleon Moon. 

 


 
Salamander

In the warming world,
you’re a little packet
of chill in my palm.

I move you to a pile
of damp wood
careful not to rouse

the toxic milk
beneath your tail:
your one weapon.

I try to catalog
the emotions behind
your flat golden eye.

You stay immobile,
breathing through
your skin.

                                              —Erica Goss

Erica Goss served as Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, CA, from 2013–2016. She is the author of Night Court, winner of the 2016 Lyrebird Award, Wild Place and Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets. Recent work appears in Lake Effect, Atticus Review, Contrary, Convergence, Eclectica, The Red Wheelbarrow, and Main Street Rag, among others. She is co-founder of Media Poetry Studio, a poetry-and-film camp for teen girls: www.mediapoetrystudio.com. Please visit her at www.ericagoss.com

 


  

A late-blooming poet named Ted
Birthed sonnets and odes in his head.
Though tutored by Auden
He’d really been drawed in
By Shakespeare, whom he’d read in bed.

                                                                    —Fred Yanntanuono

Fired from Hallmark for writing meaningful greeting-card verse, Fred Yannantuono has currently published 415 poems in 85 journals in 36 states. Was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2006, 2013, and 2015. Widely considered one of the greatest poets to ever come out of northern Bronxville (population 32), his book, A Boilermaker for the Lady, has been banned in France , Latvia , and the Orkney Isles. To Idi Amin I’m a Idiot—And Other Palindromes was recently published. Another book of poems, I Hate to Second-Guess Myself, Or Do I? is due out in 2018. Paul Newman once claimed to have known him for a long time.

 


 
Shakespearean Baseball Sonnet #33

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the uncovered seats with sov’reign eye,
Kissing with golden face the outfield's green,
Shining its beams down from our city's sky.
But other times the bases clouds to race
Over the ballpark's unseen pre-game face,
And under the tarp hide all the bases,
Waiting for the storm's move to other places.
And then when again the sun did shine bright
With only the finest natural light,
The clouds had moved on to another clime
And the game's splendor would begin on time.
The groundskeepers' work we do not disdain;
They have saveth today's game from the rain.

  
                                                                            —Michael Ceraolo

Michael Ceraolo is a 59-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet with a long list of credits he won't bore you with at this time, though he can't guarantee he won't do so in the future.

 


  

Stones Fill My Belly     


Mother’s stones
father’s, his father,
my lost grandmother,
even Camille Claudel
harbors islands of
broken stones and shells
pricked from scorching sands
with splintered fingers.

             Take half of letter S
             you’ll find C, that’s me
             far from the Baltic Sea
             where the Atlantic churns
             to meet the Great Lakes—
             stones birth, settle in my belly.

                                                                 Clarissa Jakobsons

Clarissa Jakobsons instructs at a local community college and weaves one-of-a-kind artist books, exhibited internationally as well as at the Cleveland Museum of Art Ingalls Library. Sometimes she combines artist books with her poems and oil paintings. Sample publications include: Glint Literary Journal, Hawaii Pacific Review, Lake, Ruminate, Tower Magazine, and Qarrtsiluni. She writes, “Don’t be surprised to see my inner artist kicking sandcastles, climbing Mount Diablo, painting Provincetown dunes, or walking under an Ohio crescent moon.

 


  

Summer Groove

The others wear navy blazers as 
comfortably as I wear a swimsuit

talk at fundraising soirees as 
smoothly as swans swim.

Their private jets deposit them
on Nantucket the second week 

of August and the Island feels
heavy with their expectation, thick

as their helps' apprehension. They
try to look casual at the brewery

or on the beach. Expensive haircuts
and unfaded swimsuits signal

their status. Other as their means 
are, we're all sailing in the sound,

swinging at Summer Groove; in
love with the same Island.

                                                          —Monica Flegg

Monica Flegg has lived on Nantucket Island since the day after she graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. By then she had already figured out that there is more truth in poetry than in the newspaper. Nantucket has been her muse, her music, and her magic for thirty years. She lives there year-round with her husband and two children. Her very first chapbook, Somewhere in the Cycle (which includes “Summer Groove”), is slated for publication by Aldrich Press.

 


  

Zoetrope Sky

On the night the world ended, the tragic mask moon howled inside its ochre cloud screen.
The Sunday afterwards, we drove, somehow, to Coney Island, then stumbled along the beach,

shuddering like sea creatures who’d emerged from frozen loam. The sun cast a shadow
over every boardwalk crack, blinding us nauseous with each lurch of our boots.

The wood buzzed and bellowed above the blood-clotted guts of discarded fish. The Wonder 
Wheel pinned with a diminutive American flag faced waves that long ago

reduced mountains to sand, knowing its countless grains
would remain long after the amusement

park with its places to scream into the salt-whipped wind, subsumed in the wreckage
the citizens left. That night, the clouds, shutter-shocked, looped behind the slate screen sky

as the cold bone moon presided over ornamented streets it knew
one day would subside like pride to the ocean’s rise.

                                                                                                                     
—Stephanie Laterza

Stephanie Laterza has been selected as a SU-CASA 2018 artist-in-residence by the Brooklyn Arts Council. Her short fiction has appeared in The Nottingham Review, Writing Raw, Literary Mama, and Akashic Books. Her poetry has been published in Ovanque Siamo, Newtown Literary, San Francisco Peace and Hope, Literary Mama, and Meniscus Magazine. Her legal thriller, The Boulevard Trial, has gained acclaim  for its portrayal of mother-daughter, lawyer-client relationships, and feminist solidarity. She holds a B.A. in English from Fordham College at Lincoln Center and a J.D. from New England Law School. 

 



Light

in summer     half-wild

horses    sun in full

flower    we ride


all afternoon

come to a grassy

field     loll     graze


turn homeward      late

dusk     dark cast

aside     hump-back moon

                                                                      —Katrinka Moore

Katrinka Moore's latest book is Wayfarers (Pelekinesis, 2018).

 


 

Gettysburg

When it was dusk once
I stood down in the valley
between the Round Tops
near closing time for the park
and saw a man silhouetted
against the bluegray sky
on the lower hill
bringing a bugle to his lips
he let out a Taps that passed through
the evening mist and made people
walking out of the park
turn around and look up
to see a shadow praising shadows
as the night gathered
all about.

                                                        —William Cullen, Jr.

William Cullen, Jr. is a veteran and works at a social services non-profit in Brooklyn, New York. His work has appeared in Canary, Concis, Gravel, Gulf Stream, Pouch, Spillway, Switchback, Written River: A Journal of Eco-Poetics, and The American Journal of Poetry.

[Editors' Note: We thank Mr. Cullen for his service to our country.]

 


  

William Carlos Williams at The Boucherie In Grand Coteau, Louisiana


Chefs gather in a wide field—huge vats
of gumbo bubble on open-air stoves
next to homemade steel barbecue pits.

A caged pig waits, head lowered, a bristling, 
glowering gray god. I ask the farmer
if the animal senses what’s in store for him. 

He tells us the pig is grateful for the good life
he led. Fear eats away gratitude. Anger eats 
away fear. We all ate the pig, it was delicious. 

                                                                                   —Elizabeth Burk

Elizabeth Burk is a psychologist who divides her time between a practice in New York and a husband and home in southwest Louisiana. She is the author of two chapbooks, Learning to Love Louisiana and Louisiana Purchase (Yellow Flag Press). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Rattle, Atlanta ReviewCalyx, Southern Poetry Anthology, Naugatuck River Review, Earth's Daughters, NELLE,  Passager and elsewhere. Her forthcoming collection, Duet—Photographer and Poet, will be published this fall by Yellow Flag Press.



 



Bild.

slowly fragments of the day settle
and the view gets pieced together

could that be Roland Barthes across the road
searching for a final missing fragment?

the very moment he finds it
will he disappear?

                                                           —Pete Spence

Pete Spence was born in 1946 and hopes the world doesn’t regret it. He is a small-press publisher, artist, filmmaker, and poet, living for it day by day.

 


 

Five O’clock Whistle 


It blows, and suddenly the pavements are filled
With men and women going everywhere,
But none are going anywhere.

Women in pretty dresses are not going to dances.
Yesterday was long ago
When tomorrow set shimmery curls in their hair
And summer slipped a diamond on their fingers.

Men in soiled denims are not going on safaris.
Yesterday was long ago
When adventure held the scent of salt-air
And their names were on the roll-call of ambition.

The whistle is a smokescreen,
And somewhere, on the other side,
Lies the "Open Sesame" of youth.                            

                                                                           —Vernon Waring

(Previously published in Ascent Aspirations Magazine)

In 2017 an e-book of several poems by Vernon Waring appeared on the POETRY REPAIRS website; the 24-poem collection was titled The Universe Tilts and other poems. Since 2011, his flash fiction and poetry have earned commendations nine times in the New Millennium Writing Awards Competition, while four of his poems have won prizes on contests sponsored by Winning Writers. Nineteen of his short stories have been featured on the Ascent Aspirations Magazine website. A native of Philadelphia and a former newspaper reporter and advertising professional, he now resides in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

 


 

Dedication to a Volume of Poetry

         Homage to Charles Baudelaire

I know it’ll hurt me but I want you to do it
break my spine if you have to
but spread open the eager pages
and nail them down with
the impatient darts flung by your eyes
my story will return them
with the cruel lashes of the lines

pain added to pain becomes pleasure
an ecstatic dance with nonexistence
as rigor mortis curls the fading pages

sip by sip wedge yourself between the stanzas
wreak havoc with the metaphors
and if the drunken words fly away
leaving the open pages smooth and pale
you’ll become the poem
and I’ll be a book finally freed of words

                                                                                       —Paul Sohar

Paul Sohar drifted as a student refugee from Hungary to the U.S., where he got a BA degree in philosophy and a day job in chemistry while writing and publishing in every genre, including seventeen volumes of translations, among the latest being Silver Pirouettes, Gyorgy Faludy’s poetry (Ragged Sky Press, Princeton, 2017). His own poetry: Homing Poems (Iniquity Press, 2006) and The Wayward Orchard, a Wordrunner Press Prize winner (2011). Other awards: first prize in the 2012 Lincoln Poets Society contest and a second prize from Rhode Island Writers' Circle prose contest (2014). Translation prizes: the Irodalmi Jelen Translation Prize (2014), Toth Arpád Translation Prize, and the Janus Pannonius Lifetime Achievement Award (both in 2016, Budapest, Hungary). Magazine credits include Agni, Gargoyle, Kenyon Review, Rattle, Poetry Salzburg Review, Seneca Review, etc.

 



The Guide

                        “… treat each guest honorably… each has been sent as a guide from beyond …” —Rumi

 

How to live in this place we call life,

its porous borders flabby as old skin. How to walk

on its muscular surface below our insignificant feet without tripping

or falling or flailing for balance, unaware of grabbing beyond

all that surrounds us. How to

wander away from the old path, the one where

we were taught to tiptoe around everything,

even our shadows. How to

walk in the light as if it were unbreakable, as if

it would linger, as if our lives

weren’t made of eggshells.

 

                                                                            —Jill Evans

Jill Evans, also known as Jill Evans Petzall, makes documentary films and media art installations, writes poetry, and teaches about social justice from a female perspective. She is the winner of four Emmy Awards for her scripts and documentary films. Jill also designs and crafts one-of-a-kind jewelry in her company, Touchstones Designs. She lives in St. Louis, MO, and started her career in her 40s while raising three young children as a single mother. All her work is fueled by a graduate degree in philosophy. Now in her 70s, she has just begun to publish the poetry that she has been writing all her life.  

 


 

Mother Tongue

Sophistication isn’t damn good to drink
So why don’t you untie my tongue
like you undress me in the dark, don’t
let my ego ruin our night, don’t scan betrayal
in your mind—life’s not so bad if you don’t pay attention.
Reaching out in the middle of night, I don't
know what I’m trying to grasp with my hand.
When the sound of a trumpet wraps my body,
I want to speak in my mother tongue.
I don’t apologize, Sorry, sorry
English isn’t my first language ...
Yes, I smell like garlic—Don’t kiss me,
I had kimchi—you smell too, like scorched lamb
and limburger; let us just love each other.

                                                                              —Tanya Ko Hong

(Previously published in F.R.E.& D2014)


Tanya (Hyonhye) Ko Hong, poet, translator, and cultural curator, has been published in Rattle, Beloit Poetry Journal, Entropy, Cultural Weekly, Korea Times, Korea Central Daily News, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles, and is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently, Mother to Myself, A collection of poems in Korean (Prunsasang Press, 2015). Her poem “Comfort Woman” got honorable mention in the 2015 Women’s National Book Association. Tanya is an ongoing advocate of bilingual poetry, promoting the work of immigrant poets. She lives Palos Verdes, CA. www.tanyakohong.com

 


  

a wind picks up a hymn afloat upon one stem of flame


My transportation was for life.
Those inside the circle lifted shining faces.
How much history do you need to reread?
The spray bottle’s red wattle.

A slim chain dangling from the off.
Don’t you open outward?
What the law requires is a surprise to the pistoleros.
Last year’s wound healed before you phoned.

What’s going on with my mouth? Only the best things.
I could be your friend. I have an opening.
Blue, the hilarious dilation of its rays.
In the best interests of dreams, I am sending you back to bed.

     
                                                                                     —Glenn Ingersoll

Glenn Ingersoll works for the Berkeley Public Library, where he hosts Clearly Meant, a reading & interview series. He has two chapbooks, City Walks (broken boulder) and Fact (Avantacular). He keeps two blogs, LoveSettlement and Dare I Read. Recent work has appeared in Poetry East, The Opiate, and Concis.  Glen Ingersoll wishes to thank H.D. Moe for the title of this poem.

 


  

Things That Work

She says she’s interested in how things work, not how they don’t: a marriage,
pinning each other to the very word with a vow, and a list, a budding friendship
nipped in one-sided opportunism. How things don’t work, we all know, tell the
therapist, lawyer, family, friends, ourselves. Tell it clear, round up a well-armed
posse. She did, she didn’t, he did, he didn’t, he said, she said, you, you, you said,
didn’t, did.

Things that work don’t ask, insist, stomp off kickin’ up dust, threaten, blame. It’s
the way hydrogen bonds to oxygen, gravity balances opposites, a spark catches, a
seed germinates, the tiniest atom alights. A gift is given to have without owning,
without taking what is not to be taken.

She says, “How do you know he won’t meet someone new, want to marry? How
do you know?”

She clenches fists, wrings hands as if to squeeze the answer drop by drop from
humid air.

                                                                                 —Catherine Arra

Catherine Arra is a native of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York. She is the author of three chapbooks, most recently, Tales of Intrigue & Plumage (FutureCycle Press, 2017). A former English and writing teacher, Arra now teaches part-time and facilitates a local writers’ group. Find her at www.catherinearra.com.