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 January 2021 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 2018 March 2018 May 2019 July 2019 September 2019 November 2020 March 2021 November 2021 WINTER 2022 Hochman Reviews Metras May 2022 November/December 2022 January/February 2023 March/April 2023



   JANUARY 2018

The editors of First Literary Review-East are very proud of FLRev's history of inclusion and diversity, in poetic aesthetic, form, and culture. In this first issue of 2018, we are pleased to showcase the work of poets who hail from, among other parts of the globe, Russia, Italy, China, the UK, and many regions of the USA, including, of course, good old Brooklyn, New York (where the editors happen to reside). Although there is perhaps more than just a vague hint of political tumult and ominous rumblings explored in these poems, we, as poets, need to be eternal optimists, and we believe that these poems capture this too. With that in mind, we wish you a very happy and hopeful new year, with the Muse faithfully at the helm.

                                           —Cindy Hochman and Karen Neuberg

 


  

One-sentence Story/Prose Poem

To find life's meaning, he crawled to a cliff's edge …

                                                                                       —Austin Alexis 

Austin Alexis has recent work in Ginosko Literary Journal, Nomad's Choir, The Lyric, Maymark Press Hand-out Sheets, and Home Planet News On-line. His one-act, one-character play "Do Not Call" was performed at Theater for the New City in May. His poetry collection is Privacy Issues (Broadside-Lotus Press, 2014).

 


 

Poem for the New Year

Think, if you can,
Of Time
Not as a striding, glaring
Fury with an upraised
Sickle,
But as a limping, eyeless
Cripple
An Oedipus,
An impotent,
Beggar
Deserving fear and
Pity.

                                          —Michael Graves

Michael Graves is the author of two full-length collection of poems, Adam and Cain (Black Buzzard, 2006) and In Fragility (Black Buzzard, 2011), and two chapbooks, Illegal Border Crosser (Cervana Barva, 2008) and Outside St. Jude’s (R. E. M. Press, 1990). In 2004, he was the recipient of a substantial grant of from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. Thirteen of his poems appear in the James Joyce Quarterly.


 

Each Day Should Start with Mercy

First I spared the life of a spider,
tiny thing, flicked across the kitchen floor.
Before I finished my bowl of flakes, it was back

at my elbow. How does God do it?
So I use The Selected Poems of Lorca
Green, how much I want you green.

                                                                          —Jim Zola

Jim Zola has worked in a warehouse, as a security guard, in a bookstore, as a teacher for deaf children, as a toy designer for Fisher-Price, and currently as a children's librarian. Published in many journals through the years, his publications include a chapbook, The One Hundred Bones of Weather (Blue Pitcher Press), and a full-length poetry collection, What Glorious Possibilities (Aldrich Press). He currently lives in Greensboro, NC.

 


 

Rose Quartz

I once
saw a man
take big
reddish-pink
stones
from the back
of his car.
For just
a moment
it looked like
his hands
were full
of human
hearts.

                                 —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

 


 

The Chronicles of Nambia

There’s a closet in a white house
with room for stately clothes
the door is gold, ornate and old—
fur capes in double rows

walk slowly to the back of it
it's a path to a secret land
the fabled country Nambia
where news is partly banned—

and scenery is fantastical
where animal pride is king
the foremost vice is being nice
and losing at anything.

                                                       —S.O. Fasrus

S.O. Fasrus has poems and verse in The New Verse News, Snakeskin, Light Poems of the Week, and Lighten-Up-Online. She has written articles for National News and magazines but prefers very short forms. She's a research interviewer and lives in London, UK.

 

 


 

III

Half of my name looks like the way “Narcissus” is pronounced. In its halves it whispers bows with barbs strewn with narcosis. A portico shades the sleeper, still without his baptismal remembrance. Not even a photo to make the font smaller. Narcissus looks at himself; the rough mountain impends over his shoulders. The elders, and not just  they, say that one pain drives out another, that each head (as each body) is nothing but a fixation. After one, another. And so on. There is nothing left but formless noise, of someone who owns soaked hammers.

                                                                                      —Erika Dagnino

 

Writer and Poet, Erika Dagnino, from Italy, has performed in the USA and UE with important musicians. Currently she is writing about public transportation and the rights of passengers.

 


 

Carry Me Back to Old Assyria

I’m done, done
with Babylon and its precious gates,
and I’m done, done,
with Rome and defending myself there,
their rivers can have their fill
of others’ blood and tears,
I’m moving away, to Nineveh,
and though Nineveh may sit
in the heart of another rotten empire,
they will hear the word there,
who knows what they may do with it,
                        but they will listen

                                                                   —Ben Nardolilli

Ben Nardolilli currently lives in New York City. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, fwriction, Inwood Indiana, Pear Noir, The Minetta Review, and Yes Poetry. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to publish a novel. 

 



Can You Find Your Way?

Before crows
silence was the noble sound.

Now porcelain slips
through fingers.

The shattered
cannot hold rain.

If you petition clouds
be aware, their answers disorient.

If you are not home by dark
how old will you be?

                                                              —Kit Kennedy

Kit Kennedy serves as poet-in residence of San Francisco Bay Times & poet-in-residence of her church. She has published five collections of poetry, including Eating Oysters, published by CLWN WR Books, Brooklyn. She lives in Walnut Creek, CA.  

 


 

My Oldest Friend

Year after year your birthdays slide by as tumors
and ulcers tumble. Hot people grace subway walls,
and your voice gets quieter as dictators float past.

Year after year I refuse to hold hands with your proxy.
Some nights I jump out of bed and search
for your obituary. Your last words boom like post-war dolphins.

Year after year it’s more important I give you my final gift,
but it’s an unmade sculpture I must carve from a rock
behind a big No Trespassing sign. The wounded litter the road.

                                                                                       —Anton Yakovlev

Anton Yakovlev's latest poetry collection is Ordinary Impalers (Kelsay Books, 2017). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Hopkins Review, Amarillo Bay, Measure, and elsewhere. Born in Moscow, Russia, he has also written and directed several short films and is the current education director at the Bowery Poetry Club.

  


 

Forms

When I die the world will stop spinning
And die too
The man on the radio said we’d inhabit Mars
I won’t be around, that won’t happen
They need to stop making space plans
I will be a form, a shape, a number, a colour, a sound
All will end with me.        

                                                             —Theresa Ryder

Theresa Ryder was PA to the author J.P. Donleavy for six years, up to 2007, when she began an arts degree in Maynooth University. She graduated with a teaching degree and M.A. (Classics), achieving a first for her dissertation on Ancient Athenian politics. Theresa is currently working on a novel based on the events of her dissertation. She won the Molly Keane Creative Writing Award in 2015.  She has had two short stories accepted for publication in 2017. 

 


 

Holding down the sky
       After art by Robert Kobayashi

Small nails pin
ceiling tin slivers
into memory’s frame:
grassy fields rise
to greet scattered clouds,
a train glides over the horizon.
A child’s eye
is holding down the sky.    

                                                    —Jan Garden Castro

Jan Garden Castro’s poetry collections include: The Last Frontier (Eclectic Press, letterpress) and Mandala of the Five Senses. Her poems appear in New Letters, Exquisite Corpse, Roof, Chronogram, Brownstone Anthology, Eternal Snow: A Worldwide Anthology of One Hundred Twenty Five Poetic Intersections with Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu RD Sharma, and Cover Magazine. See her art writings at http://www.jancastro.com.

 


  

 Wet Moon
                          There may be water—a good bit of it—deep inside the moon, 
                          scientists at Brown University say. (CNN)

There is new hope for life
after the death of Mother Earth,

that personified blue angel
to which Earthlings are tied

by an invisible umbilicus,
but now that there’s evidence

of water in the moon’s core,
which might be tapped for human

survival once Gaia dries to a husk
and we colonize the cold satellite,

why not accept our self-inflicted fate
and fade out here on besieged Earth?

                                                                      —George Held

George Held publishes poems, stories, and book reviews online and in print. His writing has received ten Pushcart Prize nominations, including one each for poetry and fiction in 2016. His new collection is Dog Hill Poems (Seattle: Goldfish Press, 2017).

 


 

Blame it on the Higgs Boson

Why have we been inflicted by these intransigent quanta that insist upon

taking the form of matter, on coalescing into the awkwardness of quarks
and electrons that lump up the universe and wrinkle space-time, pushing
us all into the chaos of entropy when we could instead have lived happy
carefree lives as pure energy, serene at the speed of light which would no
longer be awe-inspiring since we would all be there together; a great
democratizer that would guarantee to even the wretchedest being that he
would not be left behind, especially as that most evil of truths, time, would
cease to have any meaning for us and we could forever be pure idea
instead of doomed sluggish masses who only dimly and temporarily perceive?

                                                                                   —Charles Joseph Albert

Charles Joseph Albert works in a metallurgy shop in San Jose, California, where he lives with his wife and three boys. He has been interested in poetry ever since the third grade when he and his brother had to learn Frost's "Runaway." For the past twenty years he has participated in the formalist poetry workshop at eratosphere.com, learning from masters like Alicia Stallings, Alan Sullivan, and Tim Murphy. His poems and fiction have appeared recently in Literary Nest, Quarterday, Chicago Literati, 300 Days of Sun, Abstract Jam, Literary Hatchet, and Here Comes Everyone.

 


 

Magnificent: An Anagram Poem

Time to imagine
a finite,
faint magic
in a Maine café,
a tame gamine,
a gift
to incite:
a fine Ming
from a giant
of mint
and famine.

                                        —David Spicer

David Spicer has had poems in Chiron Review, Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, Reed Magazine, Santa Clara Review, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. The author of Everybody Has a Story and four chapbooks, he’s the former editor of raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books, and is scheduled to have From the Limbs of a Pear Tree (Flutter Press) released in the Fall of 2017.                                            

 


 

Cat Nap

If you set out in one direction you will find another.

Too many don’t serve the purpose directly.

There has to be a short or long cut to sever the ties.

Thousands of chalky white stones
In Arlington cemetery.

But I mean come on, Mr. Clean.

These are the distortions of which war informs us.

You could call it beauty as easily as the next guy,
Girl, or other object.

But father knows best, a sixty-six year old schoolyard bully
Sticking his tongue out at my chin.

What are you doing, or running about, in your pajamas?

At least I had the decency to respond to their communiqué.

The more you succeed the more you fail.

I imagine the cat watching from a corner
Whereas in fact she’s in the other room fast asleep.

                                                                                           —Ian Ganassi

Ian Ganassi's poetry, prose, and translations have appeared in over 100 journals, in print and online, including, most recently, Sonic Boom, Pif, Otoliths, and New American Writing. His poetry collection Mean Numbers was published by China Grove Press in September of 2016.

 


 

The Prehistoric Giants

I live in the very eyes of the stone
I am the light of the light,
The core of the universe.
Out of water and fire I emerge
Yes, churning water, turning fire.
There was a time, in black and white, when
The space of the galaxy was resplendent with colours.
The world is a book of dreams
The city of the future is above the clouds.
The prehistoric giants thence I saw
They are solemn as mountains
Living in the city of gold, transparent in body,
Synchronous with the sun and the moon and the stars.

                                                               —Hongri Yuan

Hongri Yuan, born in China in 1962, is a poet and philosopher interested particularly in creation. Representative works include Platinum City, Gold City, Golden Paradise , Gold Sun and Golden Giant. His poetry has been published in the UK, USA ,India ,New Zealand, Canada, and Nigeria.

 



Rainbow Radical

Wish immersion this version of ritual
romance scantily fits my delusional directory
as I finger the fate of Kings lingering
on the flick of a pen-knife in the service
of Worcester alibis smiling from a Pliny pulpit

I hear the drizzle of the rainbow radical
to an antic sky harpooned by mourners
chirping godspeak as we the blinking public
putter under the thorny scent
of thunder-roses, bent knees knocking

Fissure river a roar or a pouring
indebted to the lay of the lamb in heat
A walking canvas of lasting ephemera:
bemused at the variance

                                                                       —Mitch Corber

Mitch Corber is a New York City neo-Beat poet, an eccentric performance artist, and no wave videographer. He has been associated with Collaborative Projects, Inc. Colab and is creator-director of cdable TV’s long-running weeikly series Poetry Thin Air in New York City and its online poetry/video archive. He is a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship grant (1987) in the field of emerging artforms.

 


 

Transparent

Shoulders aligning the sack of you,
you shrug

then tumble down the day’s hillside,
deepening

your jagged bed. What accompanies you?
A leaf,

a water strider, light and shadow, all
briefly,

before hurrying on their way. You
refuse

to be discouraged by gravity, instead
yielding

to the daily plummet. At the end, you
look beyond,

trusting your soul
transparent.

                                       —Devon Balwit

Devon Balwit writes in Portland, OR. She is a poetry editor for Minute Magazine and has five chapbooks out or forthcoming: How the Blessed Travel (Maverick Duck Press); Forms Most Marvelous (dancing girl press); In Front of the Elements (Grey Borders Books), Where You Were Going Never Was (Grey Borders Books); and The Bow Must Bear the Brunt (Red Flag Poetry). Her individual poems can be found in The Cincinnati Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Fifth Wednesday, Red Earth Review, The Fourth River, The Free State Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and more.

 


  

Devoted Daughter of the Moon

The devoted daughter of the moon 
  revels in starlight 
Sweet to the touch, the taste
She dances around an eternal campfire 
The night wears on—still she dances!
She will dance this way until dawn
when the bright rays of the sun 
   will send her looking for shelter 
One million dawns and one million 
dreams later 
She'll awaken to cast her glow 
upon our epoch
which is in sore need 
  of tinsel and starlight

                                                        —Matthew Anish

Matthew Anish is a poet/writer who lives on New York's Lower East Side. He has had work published in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Alura, Aim, and many others.  He also writes a monthly column about collectibles. He has been teaching ESL at BMCC for the last 17 years. 

 


 
The Woman with a Thousand Heads #5

The excitement, oh, it starts
when the top flies off.
The whistle blows. The poet
leaves her farmhouse

wearing a flowered hat
and little else.
The stealth bomber’s blip
slips into the circular sweep

with a honey bee’s outline.
It sucks pollen from the pin
that only pretended to center
the radar display. Today,

it engages the floral  
world atop Miss Emily’s head.

                                                     —Glen Armstrong

Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters.

 


 

How to Write a Poem in Eight Steps

1)
Eat a banana
If you don’t like bananas, then one ripe Haitian mango

2)
Call someone on the phone.
Doesn’t matter who.

3)
Do not do your laundry.

4)
Look for your favorite pen.
Put it somewhere easy to find.

5)
Wear a necklace if you have one.

6)
Think about the day of the week.
Monday, for instance. Or Wednesday.

7)
Play a piece of music.
James Brown often works.

8)
Say the word poem three times.

                                                                    —Esther Cohen

Esther Cohen writes a poem  a day most days at esthercohen.com