Congratulations on your purchase
of the Bob Ross Joy of Painting, 

            Volume 31.  For $17.95 you’ll learn
how to fulfill your creative potential

through Bob’s patented Wet on Wet®
method, in which the world

is rewritten with a swept wrist
before it has had a chance to set.

Standing alone in the black, a blank
canvas before him, Bob conjures

for you a mountain first, then
mist and moss beneath the cliffs.

Watch as Bob indicates the sky.  The sky
could only ever be represented

with Prussian Blue, the color-fast,
non-toxic pigment used extensively

in the dyeing of uniforms pressed
to the bodies of young European

men marching side by side to war.
The sky will appear less militant

when mixed with a bit of white.  Where
did Bob learn to paint such skies?

Ten years in Alaska.  My favorite
Uncle asked me if I wanted to go there –

Uncle Sam, croons Bob.  He said if you
********don’t go you’re going to jail.

 That is how Uncle Sam asks you.
Ask Bob to show you that bit with

the fan brush again, how an entire lake –
the depth of which suggested

by shadow – can be achieved
by applying the hand’s tremor to paint.

There could be some fish down there,
or else a body swallowed up as if

it never existed and no one missed it.
The surface of the lake is just that calm.

Bob likes to finish off with some Titanium
White where the sun glints

off the surface.  Encouraged by Bob’s smile,
certain you’ve impressed him with your application

of his favorite pigments, you step
back to admire the brilliance of the white

against the blue.  This is the white
released by an Atom Bomb; Bob will

attest to that.  It eclipses the trees,
but no matter.  There are no mistakes, only

 happy accidents.  You’ll add another tree, then
another to fill in the blown-out center.

You won’t stop painting until you have an army of trees.

 

***

 

Emily Saland received her MFA from George Mason University, where she was the Heritage Writing Fellow and Editor of Phoebe: A Journal of Literature and Art.  Her poems have appeared in DIAGRAM, The Cincinnati Review, Smartish Pace, The Seneca Review, Radar Online, and elsewhere.  She works and teaches at Marist College, in Poughkeepsie, NY.

 

We got this.  We got you.  And US and A,
as in OK, as in alright.  Today
is a tragic day.  We get that.  We woke
to suffering, keen to liberty.  We hope
for a convo…eventually.  We feel,
by God, it’d be wrong to comment.  We still
reeling.  Give us time to grieve!  Thoughts & Prayers.
We swear, we pledge to map the dots and squares
in Vegas, VA Tech, Sandy, Pulse.  Lonely
is the bullet in the gun.  If only
there was something to be done.  Wait, you’ll see:
we have the right (answer), rhymes with “please us.”
Thoughts & Prayers for a place near you, for you—
now, more than ever.  The least we can do.

 

***

 

Michael Marberry‘s poetry has appeared in The New Republic, West Branch, and Waxwing and has been anthologized in The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Best of the Net, The Southern Poetry Anthology, and New Poetry from the Midwest.  Currently, he’s the Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry at Emory University.  More of his work can be found at www.michaelmarberry.com.

Is one of me too many for the earth?

The way that one of you’s not near-enough?

The way the fenceposts are positioned just

so far apart my hands can never touch

your hands?  The way a hand can break a hand?

The way my hands are less like mine the more

I look at them?  (The palms are pink and square

like chicken breasts, lined with blue nostalgias,

and in dreams the fingers shrinking, slowly.)

The way your hands retain significance:

your gestures, your short ironic dances?

How your hands behave in mourning?  The way

I—still having much to accomplish—was,

nonetheless, unable to accomplish?

 

***

 

Michael Marberry‘s poetry has appeared in The New Republic, West Branch, and Waxwing and has been anthologized in The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Best of the Net, The Southern Poetry Anthology, and New Poetry from the Midwest.  Currently, he’s the Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry at Emory University.  More of his work can be found at www.michaelmarberry.com.

The truth is we die dishonorable death:
I know the odds to say that.  One minute
today had me thinking I was something
(had something) once, but I wasn’t (didn’t).

The words won’t make it better, not my words
—which, as I write this, conspire to shame me.
We’re weighing options in four dimensions.
We’re listing pros and cons like a numbskull.

The world is too big.  There are too many
boring, lonely people—who I can’t help
but hear.  (They are always, always singing.)
When they look at me, I feel bone lousy;

my cells show their weakness like a jenga.
To leave, the heart needs its reason to stay.

 

***

 

Michael Marberry‘s poetry has appeared in The New Republic, West Branch, and Waxwing and has been anthologized in The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Best of the Net, The Southern Poetry Anthology, and New Poetry from the Midwest.  Currently, he’s the Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry at Emory University.  More of his work can be found at www.michaelmarberry.com.

I made a real clay ring! Look Daddy, look!
But the traffic’s too much, Jesus and guns
and pet lover bumpers, most of them trucks
at forty an hour till the red light comes.
When I look back, my beaming young girl is
all absorbed in the work of becoming
but in my left ear, it’s Netanyahu
spinning dead Palestinian children.
We’re using, he says, missile defense
to protect our civilians and they’re using
their civilians to protect their missiles.
I try hard to smile at her Play-Doh ring.
The strumming builds from her favorite song,
Wonderful World, and the road ahead blurs.

***

RB Dickson lives in Arizona and has an MFA from Antioch University.

Mellon-sweet fragrance wafts from the mirror

Just slightly

Inside the room life is rotten

No medicament can save those female breasts

Like a pair of injured pistols

Twilight belongs to assassins

 

The force that turns the air into a solid

Water is hot and fire is deep

Your mouth

Projects a string of fishy bubbles

Just slightly

Objects that are close at hand

Hard, cold, expired

Only your waist and limbs are soft and scented

Like a sick exotic snake circling our bed

 

Perhaps only an illusion / misconception

Only slightly

Jerusalem is farther from us than Mount Fuji

I have only a feather for a raft

 

***

Translator’s Note:

Yang Qingxiang’s poems have garnered critical acclaim for their unabashed portrayal of the crises facing Chinese Millennials today: poor living situation, medical care, education, and chronic lack of sleep. His poems combine these social themes with a deeply personal reflection of national identity.

New Scar Poetry (新伤痕诗)

New Scar Poetry is a concept proposed by Chinese critics in 2017. It has been observed that the contemporary anxieties experienced by the Chinese due to stark economic imbalances and social injustice have caused a recent wave of poets to respond with a new aesthetics emphasizing hurt and healing. The writers of New Scar Poetry are often Millennials (also known as the post-1980s generation in China) born after the Cultural Revolution who grew up in one-child families. They came of age in a post-socialist reality with vanishing safety nets, cutthroat capitalist competition, and growing alienation due to a market and performance-driven world. These have created deep psychological scarring in the writers and poets. Coined in 2017 against the backdrop of global social discontent, New Scar Poetry can be seen as a distinct Chinese way of dealing with the ills of the age, such as the deepening issues of globalization and shifting personal identity.

***

Poet:

Yang Qingxiang (born 1980) is an Associate Professor of Literature at the Renmin University in Beijing. He is considered a representative of the New Scar Literature Movement. Yang is the youngest member on the judges’ panel for the 9^th Mao Dun Prize, the most important literary award in China. His first poetry collection has sold more than ten thousand copies, making him one of the best-selling poets of the Chinese millennial generation.

Translator:

Frank F. Zhang is a chemist and translator. He received his BA in English from Shanghai Normal University and MS in Chemistry from Ohio University. He has worked for both Chinese and American chemical companies. In his free time, he enjoys classical music and traveling around the globe.

 

 

Little iron spring. Heavy.

Earlobes, heavy.

Nose, quite heavy. Sinus infection, severe.

Severe to critical.

 

Little iron spring. Light.

Mosquitoes, light. Chugging fan blades,

surely light. Traditional medicinal drops for the eyes,

very (to extremely) light.

 

So, between light and heavy

my soul escapes upward.

 

***

Translator’s Note:

Yang Qingxiang’s poems have garnered critical acclaim for their unabashed portrayal of the crises facing Chinese Millennials today: poor living situation, medical care, education, and chronic lack of sleep. His poems combine these social themes with a deeply personal reflection of national identity.

New Scar Poetry (新伤痕诗)

New Scar Poetry is a concept proposed by Chinese critics in 2017. It has been observed that the contemporary anxieties experienced by the Chinese due to stark economic imbalances and social injustice have caused a recent wave of poets to respond with a new aesthetics emphasizing hurt and healing. The writers of New Scar Poetry are often Millennials (also known as the post-1980s generation in China) born after the Cultural Revolution who grew up in one-child families. They came of age in a post-socialist reality with vanishing safety nets, cutthroat capitalist competition, and growing alienation due to a market and performance-driven world. These have created deep psychological scarring in the writers and poets. Coined in 2017 against the backdrop of global social discontent, New Scar Poetry can be seen as a distinct Chinese way of dealing with the ills of the age, such as the deepening issues of globalization and shifting personal identity.

***

Poet:

Yang Qingxiang (born 1980) is an Associate Professor of Literature at the Renmin University in Beijing. He is considered a representative of the New Scar Literature Movement. Yang is the youngest member on the judges’ panel for the 9^th Mao Dun Prize, the most important literary award in China. His first poetry collection has sold more than ten thousand copies, making him one of the best-selling poets of the Chinese millennial generation.

Translator:

Frank F. Zhang is a chemist and translator. He received his BA in English from Shanghai Normal University and MS in Chemistry from Ohio University. He has worked for both Chinese and American chemical companies. In his free time, he enjoys classical music and traveling around the globe.

 

& when you look at the signpost of antiquities

on  the way to  renaissance, you shall see the

scars of pharaoh’s whips on the sinews of our past.

you shall see tales of legends, the sweet oratories

of incarnates in mixtures of hogwash & swill.

you shall see a geoidal world filled with vagueness

swooshing to gravitational songs of self discovery

 

***

 

Ajise Vincent is an economist and social researcher based in Lagos, Nigeria. His works have appeared at The Bond Street Review, Indiana Voice Journal, Jawline Review, Jalada, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Chiron Review, Asian Signature, Ann Arbor Review, Yellow Chair Review, Bombay Review, Birmingham Arts Journal, Snapdragon: a journal of art & healing, The Cadaverine, Souvenir literary journal, Elsewhere, Saraba, Sentinel Quarterly & various literary outlets. He is a recipient of the Eriata Oribhabor poetry prize 2015. He loves coffee, blondes & turtles.

O wildest blue. O wild

boar scalpeled

open, peeled back, let me

click you. Let me

like until your blue

fat glows. O phenomenal

mystery, you’re so

bright already, o terrible

terrific, shot dead

so someone could

snapshot you. O

shareable beast,

o trending freak

animal, the internet wants

to know if I want

to know more, and how

could I not want

to know more about

pig’s blue innards,

to see in the photographs

a bloody hand holding back

the skin. I want

to press my pink finger against

your marbled blue

bubblegum fat.

Oh, how I want that hand

to be me my hand.

O swine, how you

bait me, and I cannot

touch you, I can only

click. O pig that appears, I

am also blue, and though

my shade is more

metaphorical, it’s like

you know me, and the internet,

it knows me, it says

recommended for you:

 

***

 

Kathryn Smith’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Mid-American Review, Southern Indiana Review, Redivider, Laurel Review, Bellingham Review, Duende, Cleaver Magazine, and elsewhere. Her first poetry collection will be published in 2017 by Scablands Books.

 

I have a dream of the US embassy of San Juan Puerto Rico

going the way of the Cruz of San Juan,

To smithereens, caught in desert trees,

so as not to taint the sky

or the sea that swells in the sky

 

(for not one leg must be broken

off the starfish that combs a Spanish prostitute’s medusa hair)

 

 

I have a dream of young and old on the Isla de los Monos swimming naked in the sea in the belly-sky,

in kiss of light, all who look up see their bodies, genitals in the greatness of sun-wheel

beauty of their miscegenation                                               behold skyfuls of people who bled myths and legends

from their wounds and anus-holes

 

the Voudu version     of   Michelangelo’s Chapel

Medusa is distracted by the golden spectacle,

freed, the masses choose not human sacrifice as placebo

and move crab-like towards more freedom, criminal wonders without salvator-fish redemptions.

 

I dream an ailing dream

of all dissidents in cubic Cuban walls of sea, freed

the Catholic sages, the innocent castratos under Castro’s iron bicycle of demagoguery, down with the last bearded demagogue

who quotes Spanish poetry

 

Say,

DOWN

WITH THE LAST BEARDED DEMAGOGUE

WHO QUOTES SPANISH POETRY

 

There are worse walls than one

Oppressing by ballad or well-intentioned inefficiency

 

Get lost,

Resurrect good old gangsters like Noriega

Run to the other end of island

Leap,

over saltwater brooks, sleeping sea-monsters—

through  a window see the Muslims in Guantanamo

maybe there are a few Nasruddins and Jews among the jihadis,

bearded and bleeding in the long dark absences of love—

Gog & Magog without demagogues—

***

Arturo Desimone, Arubian-Argentinian writer and visual artist, was born in 1984 on the island Aruba which he inhabited until the age of 22, when he emigrated to the Netherlands. He relocated to Argentina while working on a long fiction project about childhoods, diasporas, islands and religion. Desimone’s articles, poetry and fiction pieces have previously appeared in CounterPunch, Círculo de Poesía (Spanish) Acentos Review, New Orleans Review, in the Latin American views section of OpenDemocracy and he writes a blog about Latin American poetry  for the Drunken Boat poetry review.