Andrew Braunbhar

Learning Light’s Angles -For my Crane, Angela Luedke Can an arrangement of light be odd? Too many beams coming down at obtuse angles through the east windows. It’s early. We’re in bed. I read poetry to you, quiet. You list your gratitude and ask me what you should wear today.   The streams of sun reach for more—never satisfied, to the African violets I gave you for your birthday, loitering the nightstand, unsure of their placement. We know the lease is running out. Through your small stained glass, glares red light and green light.   My heart beats: stay – leave – stay – leave. The man next door gardens between trees. Trees that often talk to me like old men, their ideas reach in opposite directions. These trees hold birds that hold their own conversations. The birds call to one another, perched on branches connected to trunks. Trunks like those of the torsos of men, men rooted in the ground with sayings like: a bird in hand?   From when I was a boy, I have flown, nesting, now and again, now and again. Of all the birds, I do not want to be a woodpecker, alone and forever knocking. Rather, I want to be a man and stand! A man who responds to your petition to be dipped, and in acquiescence finds himself disappeared in your smile.   Because, there isn’t ever going to be…  As I lay next to you, I ask: What is Light? I haven’t ever had much of anything in hand and wouldn't know what to do with a cage, or where or how to root my life, and what is or isn’t the right thing to say. But from the bed, at an acute angle, I look and still see you: the sun breaks on your nakedness.  jesus christ a super bunny “so God created man in his own image…” Genesis 1:27 -matthew- sometimes in earthquakes bunnies come running out of the ground. this sort-a happened to jesus christ too! but unlike seeing bunnies, his disciples didn’t even believe what they saw. eleven went up to the mountain, they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted. he told them to baptize in the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. but he didn’t know what was coming: colorful bunny costumes, scavenger hunts, wicker baskets, and egg painting extravaganzas. -mark- mary m., mary, and salome went to make sure jesus was properly buried. now all sorts of animals return in the spring, so i’m not sure how bunnies hopped-to. either way jesus said go to galie and they fled. they said nothing anymore and were afraid. like bunnies, they were terrified of any other living thing. made them run all over the place. -luke- almost the same group of women see, believe, and tell the apostles. but the apostles don’t believe this time. however, peter checks and is amazed! then there’s the whole road-to-emmaus- scene and jesus ends up breaking bread and giving it to the disciples for them to know him. now we get chocolate shaped easter bunnies, candy eggs, and peeps that we eat once a year to celebrate the resurrection. -john- mary goes by herself in this version. she is crying at the tomb and two angles come down to comfort her. then jesus appears to her and tells her to spread the good word to his disciples. nowadays some girls wear bunny costumes to help them spread their good word. sometimes they even put a fuzzy tail on their tuckus. it makes me wonder: did god ever eat chocolate until he vomited? Splankly The Copa Room, Sands Hotel, Las Vegas January 28, 1966 They probably think, Count Basie! What’s with the name? “I got a horn section whose mystique compares to seeing the Big Apple for the first time. Al Aarons and George “Sonny” Cohn, playing like city lights sparkling to the night’s sky. Wallace Davenport, and Phil Guilbeau who’re at liberty with the chords sliding over their heads. All these trumpets just trying to capture that city skyline at sunset. I’ve Henderson Chambers, who always patiently waits for the plug, to proceeds and playfully pop the line. Al Grey, Grover Mitchell, and Bill Hughess, who all caress the melody like she’s an African Princess. All these gents are screaming sweetly with trombones; as if there could be resolution to Watts. I lead Marshall Royal and Eric Dixon, who’re crying for the harmony as if she could come back all unvarying, as like before. Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and Charlie Folkes wailing scales to balance the load. All these lips squawking wood winds if only to prove something to themselves—to stand out and be apart of, like getting a grumpy kid to bust out laughing, from the first to the last time. I got a rhythm section whose coda is your head nodding. Freddie Green, Norman Keenan, and Percival “Sonny” Payne swinging the rhythm because they know that the grinning heads, stomping feet, and slapping hands, even through all the smoke, make it matter. And me William, Bill Basie on the keys. Keys that provide for people, keys that Count for my name. Keys that’ve justified me to myself to the world – I stand here – Jazz Royalty earned.”

---

Andrew Braunbhar is writer, director, and producer who makes art for fun. His work focuses on screenwriting and poetry. Andrew's art strives to provide an active experience of internal questioning and validation. He completed an MFA in 2016 and was an English/ ESL Teacher for seven years before gallivanting back into the trades. Currently, he works as an Independent Insurance Adjuster which allows him to write for at least an hour or two every morning before jumping into adult-jungle-gym time crawling around on residential and commercial properties.

toc

next

Richard Foerster

Early Gothic Tales

The tintinnabulations of a brittle dog-eared book,

a belfry, a bastion, a crypt

with a clock

like a mouth pried open

to swallow the minutes.

*

Tabulations of sound: riprap, the frass

of fallen trees,

fragmented stones along a forest path

where a boy finds himself in the mist

*

of another childhood,

devoured.

*

In which he awakes beneath the rip and rap

of a pendulous blood-slick blade,

its lustre of fire,

the yawning gulf of a thousand thunders,

his gibbering murmurs.

*

In which a heart resounds

like an unstrung lute

suspended in the airless room.

*

In which an executioner stands

with his hood slicked back

amid the bastion’s breach.

*

In which the boy is no longer a boy

but a clock

that measured the minutes by the beats of a heart.

After Listening with a Friend to Marty Balin Sing “Comin’ Back to Me”

Let me explain back then. In ’67, I’d already worn this vinyl down.

And so there we were, seaside, on my classmate’s Larchmont lawn,

four prepsters, post-prom, with our dates in the warmth of June, and I

was blissed out on Balin’s transparent dream, the guitars’ hypnotic

pulse, the recorder’s lilt. Some of us were drunk while we listened

and watched the Sound’s luminescence spill onshore. The air was aswirl

with fireflies and moths, and the yellowing scent of my date’s gardenias

was drifting up the sateen slope of her breast. That’s when I sensed

it was not summer that held it’s breath too long. A twitch had begun

cascading from the crook of my neck where she’d nuzzled her head.

And yet I hesitated to disrupt her occasional sigh for fear

the night would collapse around me like cinders at the LP’s end

when the arm lifts. Oh, I’d been there before—the janitor’s boy

in a rented tux among the posh; the scholarship boy unmannered

in country-club niceties of toggling knife and fork; the boy

put in a jar, screwed tight, not least of all by his own hand’s torque—

lost in that tidal yearning to kiss, then not, to want, then pull away.

I remember watching my friends that night, how their fingers

inched into unknowns, how their tongues had already learned

a language less harsh than the one I’d been made to speak at home.

I’d watch them after gym amid the steam and banter, how the soap

streamed from their bodies like music, how pure and potent

and relaxed they were in the certainty of themselves, and I . . .

I wondered if that girl’s name and the searing expectations

in her gaze would ever dissolve, like the ice has in this tumbler of gin.

Tonight, here with you, when I pulled this scratchy record

from its sleeve, it wasn’t to resurrect from the mist of that place

and time some shadow of her, or even them. Nothing to do with that

distant stirring. It’s always been about something far less

tangible, something I’d hoped would return in the fullness of its beauty.

Angela

gradually I’m changing to a word

—Stanley Kunitz, “Passing Through”

Entropy as trope, < τρóπoς, a turning, as in

flesh to grit, to smoke’s billion particulates

into stratospheric blue: Giotto in the ground

pigments he mortared into heaven; or Sargent

embodied in the stroke of cadmium white

on the guitar left floating in ghostly silence

above a ruckus of flamenco chords;

or Chihuly ensouled in the molten

silica’s cooling, in the ephemeral bubble

of breath held in the hard unforgetting;

and as here, more modestly, in the gentle

kneading of the five ingredients my aunt

taught me were essential, sixty years ago

in the ritual of rolling the assembled

mixture in my hands before easing each

portioned orb into the blood-red sauce,

in the nourishing aroma that arose then,

so diffuse, yet reclaimed in this, my small kitchen

of ideas—it’s the sort of afterlife I can’t help

but think she would have chosen for herself.

---

Richard Foerster's ninth collection, With Little Light and Sometimes None at All, was published by Littoral Books in September 2023. Among his many honors are two National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowships, the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, and the Bess Hokin Prize awarded by Poetry Magazine.

toc

next

Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith

Punctuation

Many of those nights I felt like a parenthetical

for your chants about our

crowded with pins and nickels drawers,

faded sheets and overplayed Eagles albums.

Taking it to the limit again and again

just made the day a toothache.

My identity craved the wind through the

front door run-on sentence

the wander up the arroyos and chart the sky

at night adventure.

The turn off the noise in the room

and dance into the bar and claim the stool

in front of all the dance move juke box action.

Not the comma splice which was an old shoe

not the three-word interrogative which was the

stale empanada, but feel this, the Jack Kerouac run-on

the wild scream into the woods that scares the

small rodents into their holes.

I walk outside and look at the street signs

maybe that will make it all seem right. One

night the church across the street burned

down like a short declarative you kept stashed in

the freezer for big times. You yanked

it out to let me know I could leave any time

like when the song ended or the period

closed the final sentence of a story where

the boy stands on the edge and thinks of his first

good deep kiss that made him feel the sky was his.

I knew the door opened both ways

into the desire and out to the silence

of a boneyard. You were from someplace

with big windows and clear syntax. I just

wanted to understand who else shares this story?

Against The days

Nothing was open that late.

Just slap my face and then

take out the disinfectant wipes

and clean the plastic tube.

Pack up the bowl. You know our

fingers cannot be trusted to roll

anything so delicate ever again.

This has started fighting against the days and all

that good time. This is what was

before the radio and television began

to go on

to go on

filling the room with sounds and sounds

and more sounds.

Turn off the volume and the images

are just full of what you can break.

What you wan to break: a lamp, the old

stool you always trip over in the dark,

the rooster made out of red peppers.

Now, we can’t help it but when is it too late

to be out? Waiting for the event to run

around the tree, throw its cap

into the street. Bring us the

churros, new huaraches, and a hand full

of tired faith. The faith of the mystery

and warm menudo on Sunday morning.

Gratitude, Hold My Beer

Even the holidays, lately seem damaged, dragged

through melted sticky expectations, then

leaned up against a wall, and blindfolded. The pinata

ruptured into a pile of colors, and then lit up.

Is it still meditation if done with two scoops

of chocolate ice cream and no pants?

And should the yoga be completed

before or after the IPA?

My wife and I adventure the barrio

jive step waltzing surprising the neighbors,

just trying to chill the smeg out.

Striding and speaking out our gratitude to each other,

the house protects us, the novels distract us,

the new stereo infuses the house

tunes jazz blues volumed up near college party sound.

But I do not share my gratitude for

my zoom and booze boys. My friends are geeked

in conviction, Joe Strummer riffing chingasos,

Roberto Clamente firing home, two meters

in front of the sitting pato baserunner.

Can’t worry about what may happen

with a lighter and a pinata full of expired happiness.

But when did the future become a threat? A mean

skinny white guy who is crazier than an outhouse rat.

My friends are not this and no that. This is

our power. We still want

to behave like our days are a circus. Bears

wearing tuques on bicycles. Some clowns spilling

out of a small car with flowers that shoot water.

I want to imagine in this world of dream jumble chaos,

daily consuming too much processed food,

that listing gratitudes may overcome

the mass-produced pirouettes of grief.

---

Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith was born in Merida, Yucatan, grew up in Tucson, Arizona and taught English at Tucson High School for 27 years. Much of his work explores growing up near the border, being raised biracial/bilingual and teaching in a large urban school where 70% of the students are American/Mexican. A Pushcart nominee, his writings will appear in Drunk Monkeys, Barbar Literary Journal and have been published in Sky Island Journal, Muse, Discretionary Love and other places too. His wife, Kelly, sometimes edits his work, and the two cats seem happy.

toc

next