Joseph S. Pete

THE SATURDAY NIGHT SPECIAL IN GARY, INDIANA (1971-1978)

The first Saturday Night Special I ever saw I first felt.
The tall man jabbed a .38 snub nose revolver into my back,
pricked the valley between my angular shoulder blades with the cold barrel,
while I was collecting money on the paper route I pedaled before every sunrise.
He shoved me down to the sidewalk, drove his steel toe into my ribs a few times,
stomped the flat of his sole into the back of my head, knocked out my front teeth.
If I moved I died, he snarled.
For minutes, maybe hours, I hugged the sidewalk, expecting a bullet in my back
the first time I flinched, any second now.
He made away with $26, which came out of my pocket.
That was last time I rode that newspaper route or biked through Glen Park.
The second time I saw a Saturday Night Special, a few years later.
My high school self had been swilling skunky Old Style in a corner tavern
with a fake ID I bought in shop class.
Dank-breathed, swimming in a beer buzz,
I stumbled out into the alley, beelined to my car.
A darting foot stopped the door from closing, a pistol poked in.
A hand snatched my shoulder, and I was rolling out on the pavement.
"Gimme your money!" he screamed.
The next day, I found my forsaken wallet forlorn in the alley,
missing the few crumpled bills that remained after a night of revelry.
The third Saturday Night Special I saw was thrust right between my eyes
while I was cashiering at a service station on Broadway
down by Merrillville,
where all the union steelworkers fled to as the city hollowed out.
The cash register rang.
I grabbed all the bills—crisp, wrinkled, even torn—and tossed them up in the air.
When he hunched to gather them, I ran out the door and into the dark starry moonlit night.
I ran and ran, shedding my polo shirt with the gas station logo embroidered on the chest.
I ran all the way to a nearby rural town with few residents,
fewer crimes and an annual pork festival.
The fourth Saturday Night Special I ever saw I bought from a gun store
where the men were rumpled, unshaven, reeking of stale cigarette smoke, in baseball caps,
unmolested by higher education.
The piece sat untouched in a box in my hall closet for decades.
The last Saturday Night Special I ever saw was buried in a lonely shoebox.


Joseph reads "The Saturday Night Special in Gary, Indiana":



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Joseph confesses: "This poem was inspired by an anecdote I came across in Indiana University Northwest’s Steel Shavings magazine, which reminded me of when my aunt was mugged at a school bus stop, an incident that drove my family out of Gary after three generations were raised there."

JOSEPH S. PETE is an Iraq War veteran, a Peter Lisagor Award-winning journalist and a runner-up in the poetry category of the Pabst Blue Ribbon Art Contest. His literary work has appeared or is forthcoming in Defenestration, Dogzplot, Flying Island, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Modern Drunkard, Paragraph Planet, Postcard Shorts and Yankee Pot Roast, among others. His great-grandfather, grandfather and father all lived in Gary, but his family fled along with so many others. He still lives in Northwest Indiana, a barnacle on Chicago's hull, as Jean Shepherd put it. He once won a calculator in a circus raffle.

Tom Brzezina

THE MORNING OF

On the morning before the morning of,
tension knotted the muscles between
my shoulder blades.

In the afternoon before the morning of,
the dark blue van was still parked across
the street.

On the night before the morning of,
I sat up in my bed, a loaded
shotgun in my lap.

On the morning of, I heard the back
door creak open, then careful
footsteps in the hall.

In the afternoon of the morning of,
I was lying on a slab in a jail cell,
and he was dead.

In the evening of the morning of,
I mouthed off to the guard, and he
overreacted.

On the night of the morning of,
I was in a hospital bed, handcuffed to
the railing.

On the morning after the morning of,
I was still handcuffed to the railing,
but my lawyer had good news.

That evening, I sat in front of my
television, eating Kung Pao chicken,
contemplating the absurdity of life.


Tom reads "The Morning Of":



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Tom confesses: "'The Morning Of' is a dry, procedural accounting of events, which were triggered by something outside of the poem. These events suggest certain traits of the main character. Without knowledge of his original action, however, he remains a ghost."


TOM BRZEZINA

Born and raised in Detroit.
Worked in factories.
Sang rhythm & blues in dive bars.
Became ad agency word merchant.
Dropped out, turned off, tuned in.
Writes poems about conflict between
interior life and exterior world.
Hovers around home town
with true love and two dogs.

Kristina England

SLENDERMAN

Convinced he was real,
not some horror site character,
two 12-year-old Wisconsin girls
wanted to kill to please him.
They invited a friend to sleep over,
then took her to the woods for a "game."
One held her down, the other stabbed her—
once, twice, nineteen times.
They left her to bleed out in the grass,
strolling home as if no one but he
would know what they'd done.


Kristina reads "Slenderman":



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Kristina confesses: "'Slenderman' was inspired by a news article I read on CNN as part of a news-based chapbook I'm working on. The hard part of writing poems based on current news is finding something positive to write about. This was another story that left me shaking my head."


KRISTINA ENGLAND resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her writing is published or forthcoming in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Gargoyle, New Verse News, and other magazines.

Austin Alexis

SOMEWHERE IN FLORIDA

While my hair is being parted,
cut to a respectable length,
police storm in.
They mean business
disrupting this business
because they didn't see a license,
asserting their ability to read
the letter of the law.


Austin reads "Somewhere in Florida":



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Austin confesses: 'Somewhere in Florida' was inspired by hearing a radio announcer on WBAI-Radio mention the incident that is dramatized in the poem. The news story coalesced with thoughts I already had about police misconduct and about portraying "criminal" behavior in poetry.


AUSTIN ALEXIS is the author of Privacy Issues (Lotus Press/Wayne State University Press) and has published in the anthologies Off the Cuffs: Poetry by and about the Police, Empty Shoes: Poems on the Hungry and the Homeless and American Society: What Poets See.

Louie Clay

VISITING MY GREAT AUNT, MAUDE

Sit here for a spell, chile,
while I check my pistol.

I don't understand why today
I'm "as nervous as a long-tailed cat
in a room full of rockin chairs,"
as Hattie always says.

I hide it under a blue shawl
in the top drawer of my shifferobe,
but I keep imagining that Hattie
or the yard boy might swipe it.

You know how they are, good people,
but you can't really trust them.

It's still there.

My, I'm testy. Must be those cucumbers.
I love them but they don't love me.
Always bite back, and make me bite too.

My boy Dean shoulda given me target practice,
I asked him to, but he paid me no nevermind.
Hard-headed as his daddy. He said,

"Nobody would wanta harm a nice old lady."

Humph. So he thought,
but I don't believe it one bit— not that I'm nice,
not that nobody would want to harm me neither.

Funny how sentimental he gets bout me,
but mean as a snake about anyone else.

My boy done grown, still never notices
that he got his temper from me,
as shore as you be sittin in that swing.

Won't you have some more cake?
I cut only four squares
but I can always get some more.

Sides, your mama hinted on the phone
that she might like to have the real thing,
even though I already given her
the recipe five times, if wunst.

And I know she has the checkerboard pan
because Beth give her one two Christmases ago,
lessen she done give it to somebody else.

Dean used to fire in the gully down back
every weekend. I loved to hear the rounds—
something pure, something clear
when a bullet cuts through air.

Sometimes I wish Dean had never gone off.
Other people can audit for the State.
I want him here.

His father didn't do me right neither,
dying before he taught me to protect myself,
after he done bossed the county Klan
through 1926, its biggest lynching season.

I never know who, swillin white lightnin,
might remember John's devilment,
even now, twenty years later,
and decide I'm better game than John's ghost
or that headstone of his that vandals
already ricocheted half the marble off,
up behind the Presbyterians.

Now that's fittin, if I do say so,
him up there with them, predestined like,
birds of a feather, even if he did sneak in
only because our Baptist church
put off buying the lot next door
until Mr. Gilliland wanted too much for it.

Have another piece, chile, really!
The yellow squares are the richest,
made with lemon and cheeze.

That swing shore puts up a racket, don't it?
It's gettin rickity like the rest of us.

Oh don't go so soon! Leastways let me get a jar
so you can take your mama some of that lemonade.
It's no trouble. You just sit there.

I'll be right back.

Sides, I want to check that pistol one more time.


Louie reads "Visiting My Great Aunt, Maude":



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Louie confesses: "I used bits and pieces from childhood. My great-uncle was a KKK leader, but my great-aunt and I never had this conversation. I did see her pistol. My parents sheltered me from the KKK connection until I was 25. I'm glad. When a child, I might have turned criminals into heroes."

LOUIE CLAY (né Louie Crew) is an emeritus professor at Rutgers. Editors have published 2,340 of his manuscripts, including four poetry volumes. You can follow his work at http://rci.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/pubs.html.

Paul Hostovsky

THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES

I stole a bathmat
from the Royal Copenhagen Hotel

because it said Royal Copenhagen on it
and how cool is that

for stepping out of your shower onto
every day of your life in America

as a souvenir
of a few dissolute days in Denmark?

I like to snuggle the rich velvety pile
with my ten poor stubby toes

while I’m still dripping from the shower,
which is where I get all my best ideas—

then I feel a little like Soren Kierkegaard,
and a little like King Frederick,

and a little like Hans Christian Andersen
getting out of his claw-foot tub

and getting a great idea,
and standing there for a few timeless

dripping moments,
then rushing to his writing table

and spinning the yarn, still naked,
in one inspired sitting,

his trail of wet footprints disappearing
before the ink had dried.


Paul reads "The Emperor's New Clothes":



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Paul confesses: "This poem was inspired by a recent shower, which is where I get all my best ideas, and by a bathmat that I stole from the Royal Copenhagen Hotel about 40 years ago, and by a lifelong love of all things Danish."

PAUL HOSTOVSKY is the author of five books of poetry and six poetry chapbooks. His Selected Poems was published in 2014 by FutureCycle Press. He has won a Pushcart Prize and two Best of the Net awards, has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and was a Featured Poet on the Georgia Poetry Circuit 2013. He works in Boston as an Interpreter for the Deaf.

Robert Cooperman

INCIDENT AT A POLLING PLACE, AFTER THE SUPREME COURT RULING AGAINST THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT

You try to politely explain that I.D.'s
from the local university and out-of-state
drivers’ licenses aren't sufficient,
but some people just won't listen.

"What would be sufficient?" the young man
demanded, in that precise enunciation
that means he's about to say or do something
he'll regret: steam practically shooting
from his ears and nose, eyes twitching,
fingers threatening to squeeze the life
out of me, for merely being the messenger.

"A local driver's license," I told him
for the fourth time, sick of repeating it.
"So we can be sure you're not perpetrating
voter fraud," and shooed sweet old
Mrs. Dile into one of the voting booths.

"How come you didn't ask for her license?"

"Young man," I scolded, "Mrs. Dile
hasn't driven in more than ten years."

"So she’s good to go without proper I.D.?"

"Now you listen here," I pointed.
"Everyone knows the Diles; we don't
know you. Go vote where you came from."

"The polls will be closed before I even
board a plane," he rolled his eyes.

"You should've thought of that before!"
Luckily, that nice police officer was right
by the door when that odious boy shouted
I was a Klanswoman. The very idea!


Kristen Chapman Gibbons reads "Incident at a Polling Place..." (coming soon):


Cooperman confesses: "'Incident at a Polling Place' grew out the Supreme Court's vile decision that money (like the Koch brothers' largess) showered on political candidates equals free speech. and not undue influence. It was just a short leap from there to imagine that the five activist judges on the Court would then vote to repeal the Voting Rights Act, since it seems to me that their purpose in many of their more malignant rulings is to start a real race war with guns and blood in the street and everyone but white, Christian males either dead, in exile, or enslaved."

ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collection is Just Drive (Brick Road Poetry Press). He is currently working on a collection about his father's experiences in the army at the end of World War II.

Nancy Scott

THE ALPHABET OF MURDER

In the morning news:
A was convicted of murdering her third husband B forty years ago.
At the time, A didn't have much invested in B.
They'd only been married three months.
A shot B in the back of the head, because she thought B
was about to assault her two-year-old daughter C, a child
from her second marriage.
Police believe B had come off a night shift and wanted to sleep
and may just have been trying to quiet C who was crying.
A bundled B's body and carted it to a place where she
and her second husband, D, the father of C, worked as caretakers.
Shortly afterward, A married her fourth husband E,
who apparently was unaware of what had happened to B.
The pair, A and E, lived quietly for decades,
until the police discovered that E had murdered his ex-wife F
and his two sons G and H after he'd married A.
E explained that F was harassing him about his marriage to A
and E didn't know any other way to make F stop.
Now in their mid-seventies, A and E have confessed.
They have been sentenced to life without parole.
Whereabouts of second husband D and daughter C are unknown.


Nancy reads "The Alphabet of Murder":



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Nancy confesses: "A version of these events was published online at the Huffington Post as a true crime story. In this poem I attempted to diagram what I had read in the article because I was having trouble making sense of the logistics of what happened and when."

NANCY SCOTT is managing editor of U.S.1 Worksheets, the journal of the U.S.1 Poets' Cooperative in New Jersey. She is the author of seven books of poetry. The eighth, The Lanky Fisherman or Why the Winter Wind Howls over Mersey Lake (a chapbook of retold fairy tales) is forthcoming from Aldrich Press in late 2014. She is also an artist. Her poetry and artwork can be found at www.nancyscott.net.

Tom Brzezina

LEW ARCHER WRITES A POEM

The sun goes down
like a shot of cheap whiskey
and the whole city blacks out.
The moon is a toenail clipping.
And the stars drown in garish neon.

To the innocent, the dark brings dreamy sleep.
For the rest of us, the night shift roars to life
and the hammers of loneliness
begin their monotonous beat.

In the titty bar, Melody takes the stage,
her green g-string, an ammo belt
of dirty dollar bills.

The meat markets are packed with dynamite.
Bright eyes dance over the rims of cocktails,
while the fuse burns faster and faster
and the frantic thrust
of blind sex
explodes.

In the jazz club, a cat blowing furious sax
is marginalized by a roomful of meaningless
conversation.

A black-and-white rolls up on a hapless drunk,
caught pissing behind a dumpster,
while packs of acned boys
search for foes to fight.

In other words,
another night.


Tom reads "Lew Archer Writes a Poem":



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Tom confesses: "This poem was inspired, of course, by the great Ross Macdonald. His descriptions of California's underbelly during the 50s and 60s are note perfect. And Lew Archer’s ongoing patter is studded with metaphoric gems. Another inspiration was the sad state of my home town. Imagine Lew working in today’s Detroit."



TOM BRZEZINA

Born and raised in Detroit.
Worked in factories.
Sang rhythm & blues in dive bars.
Became ad agency word merchant.
Dropped out, turned off, tuned in.
Writes poems about conflict between
interior life and exterior world.
Hovers around home town
with true love and two dogs.

Catfish McDaris

LEFT HOOK TONY

For Tony Szolwinski -- gone, but never forgotten.

Tony was 93, he used to box
all through World War 2, he
punched & fought, fists & guns

As he got older, he liked wood
working, building bird houses,
carving fishing lures & ducks

He taught me to find mushrooms,
how to use certain tools, & how
to throw a punch & dodge one

Tony called me & said he had a
problem, he needed my help with,
I came immediately, there were
2 knocked out cold black guys

Bleeding on his kitchen floor, he
said he’d been working in his shop
in the basement & these 2 bastards
were eating his oxtail soup

They’d told Tony, to hit the road
before they whipped his ass,
Tony hit them with a deluge

He wanted me to help drag them
outside & clean up their blood,
before his wife got home from bingo

I called the cops, Lorraine, Tony's
wife got home from church & took
one look & hit the ceiling, I tried to

Slip out & make a clean get away,
that's when I was told I was a bad
influence, the cops looked at Tony
& I & we all cracked up laughing.


Steve Peacock reads "Left Hook Tony":



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Catfish confesses: "Tony Szolwinski was my neighbor for 15 years. He was a tough old bird, that died in March 2014. Tony had three sons that all hated each other, each of them had names that started with R. I asked him what if he would've had a fourth son. Tony said he'd name him Rumplestiltskin. I miss my friend."

CATFISH MCDARIS has been published widely, in The Louisiana Review, George Mason University Press, and New Coin from Rhodes University in South Africa. He's recently been translated into French, Polish, Swedish, Arabic, Bengali, Tagalog, and Esperanto. His twenty-five years of published material is in the Special Archives Collection at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Kayla Wheeler

GIRLS' NIGHT OUT

When you say the word assault in a room
full of bodies and basslines, the bouncer will
snake an arm around your waist, lower
his ear to your lips so he can feel the shape
your mouth makes when you say it a second time.

When you do he will ignore it, guess what
you've been drinking from the cherry vodka
on your breath. Say maybe you need another one.
You will think he means a fourth Dirty Shirley, but
he is referring to The Hand. The Hair Pull. The Bite.
What the police will call just dancing after the blood
has dried in your hair.

When you approach a second black t-shirt with
SECURITY written on the back like a warning shot,
he will not wait until you are finished to call you
Cupcake, comment on your short hair and how
you hardly have enough for a handful. Do not mistake
this interrogation for small talk. This hunting for a night out.

When the girls you came here with tell you
not to ruin their night and slip a beer inside
your fist, forget about the room, the music
and how it is the pulse of this monster.
Get a napkin from the bar, take the pen
you used to under tip the waitress. Lock
yourself in the one bathroom stall not being
vomited in. Know those three walls will not offer
a verdict before you take a stand, that writing it all
down will be the only siren escorting you home
tonight. Then write.

When he sunk his teeth into the soft flesh
of my neck, I felt the tongue of every man
I've ever denied slide across my skin,
as if licking the frosting off someone else's
birthday cake, then placing it back in the display
window. The baker telling him to have a nice day
as he walks out, mouth stained red, a free man.


Kayla reads "Girls' Night Out":



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Kayla confesses: "'Girls' Night Out' was birthed in a night club bathroom stall, immediately following an assault by a stranger. After more than one attempt to inform security, I realized the only thing that wouldn't dismiss what happened is a bar napkin and pen. More importantly, I realized that I am the most important person who believes it."


Guest editor Annabelle Edwards' ruling: "I chose 'Girls' Night Out' because it tells a full story. The writing is concise without being too brief, and as a woman I can relate to the fears that the author described. I think it also fits with the #YesAllWomen hashtag I have seen around Twitter. Women have to worry about being sexually assaulted, drugged, or murdered and after a rape happens people will say, 'Well, you were drunk,' or "Your clothes were too revealing,' or 'You never said no,' not understanding that silence does not equal consent. The poem's message is one of utmost importance."

KAYLA WHEELER is a feminist writer from New England. Her work can most recently be found in The Orange Room Review, Voicemail Poems, and Wicked Banshee. She represented Slam Free Or Die at the 2013 National Poetry Slam and is the first ever NorthBEAST Underground Team Slam Champion. Follow her at kaylahwheeler.tumblr.com

Wilda Morris

VANDALS

What if the police had found out
we were the children
who trashed the old car,
luxuriating in sounds
of glass shattering,
rocks bouncing off metal?

Would they have understood
we thought it was junk,
abandoned in the field?

Would the detective have looked
at us and thought we looked
like good kids, sent us home
with a warning? Or would he
have filed charges, taken us to court?

Would the judge have sent us
to Juvenile Hall for several months
or years? Would we have come out
hardened, hopeless?

Where would we be now?


Sarah Stockton reads "Vandals":



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Wilda confesses: "For many years, I carried a sense of guilt for having participating in an act of vandalism and lying about it. We really thought the vehicle we trashed had been abandoned. I first wrote about it in my book, Stop the Violence. I seriously ponder the question the poem raises."

WILDA MORRIS's official rap sheet shows one traffic violation. She takes the Fifth Amendment regarding other possible infractions of the law. Her book, Stop the Violence: Educating Ourselves to Protect Our Youth, was published by Judson Press. Her poetry appears in numerous print and online venues, including Frogpond, About Place Journal, After Hours, and The Avocet. Wilda Morris’s Poetry Challenge at http://wildamorris.blogspot.com provides a monthly poetry contest for other poets.

Catherine Wald

JOY WEARS A STOCKING MASK

You wouldn't recognize it if it was standing
right in front of you.

It won’t be.

You don't actually know what it looks
like.

It's going to sneak up behind you when you
least expect it.

It's going to put a gun to your head, hijack
your SUV, disable your tracking device and
tear off with you into the desert
at 90 MPH.

What happens next is
too gruesome to go into.

Afterwards, enamored of your captor,
you'll adopt arcane dialects,
abandon allegiances.

When it's all over, you won't be able
to describe it to a sketch artist or
pick it out of a line-up.

Even if you want to.


Catherine reads "Joy Wears a Stocking Mask":



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Catherine confesses: "It seems to me that joy has a very difficult time trying to enter the human heart. We put up so much resistance that desperate means are sometimes called for."

CATHERINE WALD is an author and poet with an unimpressive criminal record. Her chapbook, Distant, burned-out stars was published by Finishing Line Press in 2011.

Mehnaz Sahibzada

MUSE NOIR

Every time I write, I sense his hand sliding
up my thigh. Blackening each metaphor, he hammers
my good-girl past until it shatters like a glass mug.

I can't shrug him away. One night in Lahore
when I was fifteen, he climbed beside me in bed,
fastened a palm around my wrist. It was the only

time I saw his face, the square brown chin
and espresso-stained grin, the cunning smile that
colonized my head. I said, when I get back

to California, I'll grind you up like a bean. But
he just waved a palm-sized cross and proposed.
I said yes, of course. Still he stood me up

for prom. I wore the ruby dress with the side
slit and waited on the porch. Waited and waited
until my thoughts took off their heels and like a corpse

stood still. For months he did not show. I spent
the evenings sketching black tulips, drinking coffee–
the café the one place he was likely to be–the air

prayer-whipped with the nuns who liked to visit,
play chess in the corner. There the lighting was
lunar. One night, reading a ghost story in the back,

my thoughts woke electric. I put on lipstick,
pressed it on even too. His hand gripped my neck.
The fear delicious, the joy rose up so fast,

I couldn't move. If I stay, he said,
you’ll carry delusions, make mad like
Edgar Allan Poe. I told him I wasn't the kind

of girl who wanted a rose. He laughed at my quiver,
handed me a silver ring, something gothic. We
didn't kiss. It would have been uncouth

with the nuns watching. But the verdict
was in. My conscience mugged by a thief, I was
wife to spinning dark, to gunfire on the street.


Mehnaz reads "Muse Noir":



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Mehnaz confesses: "Since the muse is often imagined as a positive feminine figure in western mythology, I wrote this poem to explore its opposite: a morally ambiguous, masculine muse. To engage this dark urban muse, the speaker of "Muse Noir" transforms herself into a femme fatale of sorts."

MEHNAZ SAHIBZADA was born in Pakistan and raised in Los Angeles. She is a 2009 PEN USA Emerging Voices Fellow in Poetry. Her short story, "The Alphabet Workbook", appeared in the August 2010 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Her poetry chapbook, Tongue-Tied: A Memoir in Poems, was published in 2012 by Finishing Line Press.

Peter M. Gordon

TARGET

That last March winter Sunday
Walking to morning coffee and bagels
I realized how easy I was to kill.

Regular habits yield predictable movements.
Easy to place a knife-wielding assassin
Around the corner from my apartment for that
Quick slice across my throat.

I shop at the same grocery store every day,
Push on the subway every morning at seven-thirty,
Fight crowds home every night at six-fifteen.
A simple matter to sprinkle strychnine on my arugula,
Blow poison gas under my door when I'm home,

Place a dark man with a high-powered rifle
Behind anonymous windows of a high-rise.
By the time I notice a bright flash of light,
Wonder what it meant—a signal—the bullet—
I wouldn't even feel it.

Today I varied my patterns:
Walked ten blocks north to take the cross-town bus,
Never shop in the same store twice. Create algorithms
To randomize movements. Switch bank account weekly,
Swivel my head over my shoulder constantly,
Double back on routes.

Don't allow anyone
A clear shot.


Peter reads "Target":



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Peter confesses: "In The Godfather: Part II, Michael Corleone says, 'If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught anything, it's that you can kill anyone.' I wrote this poem because I realized how true that was, and how easy it is to get to anyone who doesn't have Secret Service protection."

PETER M. GORDON's first collection of poetry, Two-Car Garage, was published in 2012 by CHB Media. His poems have appeared in Slipstream, The Journal of Florida Literature, Provo Canyon Review, and a variety of magazines, anthologies and websites. Peter is President of Orlando Area Poets, a chapter of the Florida State Poets Association, and has over 30 years experience creating content in areas ranging from live theater to digital video. He holds a B.A. from Yale and an M.F.A. from Carnegie-Mellon, and currently teaches in the Film Production M.F.A. Program at Full Sail University.

Ann Clark

"You don't need to be concerned about the 'why.' You care about the 'who,'" —Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Paul Stern, commenting on woman's attack on sleeping husband in Everett, WA

CONCERNED ABOUT THE "HOW"

It's certainly not how I would have done it.
There are dollar stores everywhere,
and no one pays attention if you buy a gallon or so
of bleach,
a couple boxes of lawn and leaf bags.
Stop at a shopping plaza or two,
wait in line while a distracted clerk
rings you up,
and plays with a smartphone.
Pay in cash.

I wonder, too,
at the choice of a Sawzall.
A clerk at Home Depot or Lowe's
might remember a woman buying that sort of thing,
sexism being what it is,
and,
let's face it,
you need the proper tool for the job,
and a reciprocating saw makes as much sense
as trying to stab someone with a bread knife.
What you need for your basic decapitation
is a chainsaw.


Annabelle Edwards reads "Concerned About the 'How'":



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Ann confesses: "Here is just one of many reports of the case that sparked this poem. At the time I thought, 'Well, that woman clearly has no idea how a Sawzall works, and why did she buy all the bleach and bags at the same store?!' Then I thought that my reaction might just be a little 'off.' Surely I was supposed to be thinking, 'Oh, dear Lord! She tried to cut her husband's head off!' rather than critiquing her style."


ANN CLARK teaches Introduction to Crime Culture at SUNY Jefferson in Watertown, NY, and is pursuing a Ph.D. in English (creative writing emphasis) at Binghamton University. Her work has been published in Ragazine, Blue Line, Poetry Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is happily married to a man who owns many power tools.

Dalton Day

GENTLE MEN

My uncle taught me two things:
how to shoot and
how to cry like a man.

How to shoot: aim the gun
as an extension
of your sex. That is, question
why you are shooting
with every breath.
Hold your breath.
Put your finger on the trigger,
like it’s the tongue of the mouth
that contains the one word
you don’t ever want to hear.
Hold your breath.
You’re just shooting at trees.
You’re just shooting at air.
This is the way we stay alive,
by holding our breath
for as long
as we can.

How to cry like a man: shoot.


Dalton reads "Gentle Men":



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Dalton confesses: "This poem is inspired, of course, by my uncle. He is a hard-hearted man. The way I express my masculinity is very different from the other men in my family, and I just wanted to explore the fluidity of that, especially within my own family dynamics."

DALTON DAY received his B.A in Literature & Language from the University of North Carolina Asheville, where he was awarded the Topp/Grillot Poetry Prize. His work has appeared or will appear in Hypothetical, Rufous City Review, CAP, and Former People, among others. His first chapbook, Supernova Factory, was released by On the Cusp Press in 2013. Currently he is a poetry editor for FreezeRay Poetry and can be found at myshoesuntied.tumblr.com.

Matt Forrest Esenwine

TO THE ACCUSED

You didn't cut deep enough.

Flesh separated from flesh,
muscle from sinewy muscle,
bone from bone,
but like the scarred tamarack
out front
branded with ugly etchings
of names
and hearts
as old as you and I,
death does not come easily.

You didn't cut deep enough.

The taste of iron
red, salty
still wakes me
while I try in vain
each day
to ignore the stench of that night,
of Marlboro Lights
and urine
and hibiscus.
Through a steel-blade memory
forged from your hand,
through blazing pain
of wounds and tears,

I think of you
sitting there now
caged between concrete and steel,
sunrise and sundown,
wires and weapons,
with nothing to remember
but an old tamarack,
the taste of iron,
and the stench of Marlboro Lights
and urine
and hibiscus.

And I hate that I wonder why

you didn't cut deep enough.


Matt reads "To the Accused":



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Matt confesses: "There are two types of pain: physical as well as emotional. I thought it might be interesting to examine the turmoil going through the mind of this particular victim."

Voiceover artist and commercial copy writer MATT FORREST ESENWINE has had several poems published in various independent collections around the U.S., including The Henniker Review, Metamorphosis, the Tall Grass Writers Guild's "Seasons of Change," Assisi: Journal of Arts & Letters, and the Licking River Review, among others. In 2012, his poem, "Apple-Picking," was nominated by the Young Adult Review Network (YARN) for a Pushcart Prize. Matt lives in Warner, New Hampshire, and is currently working on several children's book manuscripts.

Linda Rodriguez

TRICKSTER TIME

They wanted the last of our land
so they made us leave our mountains with cloud shawls of blue, purple, green.
They penned us like hogs before the slaughter.
They drove us before them like a herd, and we died as cattle all along the road.

When we came to the place they were giving us, it was nothing,
hot, bare, with its buckboard hills. This land was strange to us,
and we were strange to it.
My grandfather shrugged and said, "It's a stopping place."
We were stunted and pale from that ordeal like trees that grow in shadows.

Our leaders said, "We will start again."
We all worked hard as we could, even though we were worn and thin
from nunahidunatlohilui, that Trail Where They Cried.

Some could not forget and forgive. A handful of men betrayed the Nation.
Clan leaders of those who died—and thousands died in each of the seven clans—
had a responsibility under the Blood Law.
There was ambush and death.

But we turned our energies to building, to weave the world to harmony around us.
White men used to say only the women among the Cherokee worked,
that our men were lazy because they allowed women a major say.
But lazy could never have rebuilt as we did with homes and newspaper and schools.

It seemed we would be left alone finally.
Of course, that could not happen. Yonega decided they wanted the Indian Territory, too.
It all began again, except this time they told us it was to make us like them.
We would each have our own land.
Everyone knows you can’t own the earth—it’s like owning part of the sky—
but the white man thinks he can. Someday yonega will try to put a fence around the sun.

Weary of false words, we knew these men wanted our land and intended to take it.
My father said, "I know when I hear the whistle of money,
and when I do, someone is always betrayed—and he usually looks like me."

Their promises were rooted in sand.
They gave some of us small parcels of the reservation. They gave some of us nothing.
They gave much of our land to rich yonega ranchers.
They said we were no longer Cherokee. They said there was no more tribe, no Nation.
They moved many of us far from here where we had brought forth once more
the grandmother spirits of our people.

It was hard after that. Maybe harder than the Trail, even.
Little by little, many were lost. Whiskey took a lot of good men
and some women down, the world sick, winter forever.
For most of my life, we had no tribe, according to the United States government.
But it was just one less hope. We had strong people who fought for years
to resurrect the Cherokee out of the ash of a dead fire. In the end,
they brought us to the circle of return. We were a nation once more.

You must never forget. The reason your great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother
fought and worked so hard when dying was easier, to keep from giving up or giving in,
was you and the children you will have one day and their children and grandchildren.
Never forget the debt you owe to the grandmother spirits.

[And I have learned to say, "Wado. Thank you."]


Linda reads "Trickster Time":



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Linda confesses: "In 'Trickster Time,' I was trying to recreate a series of conversations with my late grandmother in which she told me about the history of our people as her grandmother had told her. These conversations happened over a space of time and took place when I was quite young since Elisi (Tsalagi for grandmother) died just before I turned thirteen. I wanted to write a poem about learning that history from her, so I tried to put down on paper all I remembered of all of those conversations. Then I eliminated repetition of some elements over many conversations as I put the whole story together into one continuous tale for the sake of the poem. I had to be careful to stay with what I remembered from Elisi and not have it conflated with what I've learned as an adult in studying in more depth the history of the Cherokee. And of course, I can't promise that I was completely successful there because I was going back so far in time for those conversations. But I am confident that this poem is true to my grandmother's story of our ancestors' experience as she received it and as she told it to me."

LINDA RODRIGUEZ's third Skeet Bannion novel, Every Hidden Fear, will be published May 6 and is available for pre-order now. Her second Skeet mystery, Every Broken Trust, was a selection of Las Comadres National Latino Book Club and is currently a finalist for both the International Latino Book Award and the Premio Aztlan Literary Prize. Her first Skeet novel, Every Last Secret, won the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition, was a Barnes & Noble mystery pick, and was a finalist for the International Latino Book Award. Her short story, "The Good Neighbor", has been optioned for film. For her books of poetry, Skin Hunger (Scapegoat Press) and Heart's Migration (Tia Chucha Press), Rodriguez received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Midwest Voices and Visions Award, Thorpe Menn Award, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, and Macondo and Ragdale Fellowships. She is immediate past president of the Borders Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, Kansas City Cherokee Community, and International Thriller Writers. Find her on Twitter as @rodriguez_linda, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LindaRodriguezWrites, and on blogs with The Stiletto Gang, Writers Who Kill, and her own blog.

David S. Pointer

MARINE BARRACKS FIRST AID

Just as I noticed the brothel token
vending machine following me
around like a private detective
had been declared unfit for military
service, I noticed Frank choking.
I told him I'd perform the Heinrich
Himmler maneuver, but he started
laughing so hard dislodging
that hot dog-kernel concoction,
yelling 'no', that I didn't have to.


David reads "Marine Barracks First Aid":



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David confesses: "Sometime after my mom passed away from a heart attack, I realized that I had helped a few people with the Heimlich Maneuver, but hadn't fared as well with CPR. Out of this grief came the joke. The joke helped an educational worker in Nashville, but I never laid a healing hand on the guy."

DAVID S. POINTER has recent work included in Volumes V & VI of the Southern Poetry Anthology Series for the states of Georgia and Tennessee. He also has work included in Indiana Crime 2013, at James Ward Kirk Fiction and Noir Erasure Poetry Anthology at Silver Birch Press. David previously served in the United States Marine Corps military police from 1980 to 1984. His latest book of poetry is entitled Oncoming Crime Facts sold at www.lulu.com.