The Guy V. Molinari    

    – In honor of the Staten Island Ferry    

She shuttles in her guts the zoned-out
throngs who take for granted the watery
caesura from home to work to home
immersed in the glow of cellphones
while the verdigris torch salutes them.

In this amalgam of steel formed into faux
stone, cement and wood, in echos’ echo,
passengers shuffle toward seats like atoms.
They repel any touch of the coat sleeve,
any sidelong look, and they only feel

the glare of a watch at the end of a row,
or rapper’s spectacle of neon-pink laces
untied to trip on and recover, bouncing to
the buzz of earplugs, while the crescent
prow glides from the groin of the dockslip. 

A barrelled, tan policeman pets his pitbull
dazed by the harbor’s glittery plateau—
Wall Street trader bedraggled in pinstripes
squinches his eyes to blips in the market—
and who is this child waving a dollar found

gummed to his shoe?  Enter Yankee-hatted
homeless who crumple like foil. Enter oil-
soiled janitors who slip on gloves for the
5 o’clock shift under the din of passengers
debating gas’s rising prices in New Jersey,

New York. How you need a jumbo mortgage
to buy a café latté, that this ferry is free!—
which ricochet off laminate cabinets
clogged with lemon-tinted life vests.
We jolt as we dock to a fugue of horns,

and nun kissing a cross before the stampede.    

Mrs. Moore on Elizabeth Street                                

—I am sick of the seam-tight jeans, bleached,
blanched    the fried voices    The NYU students

flitting in the duel of shadows under the scaffolding
of Elizabeth Street    where boutiques are never

on sale   —rushing to shop, to class   and some
blonde thing cantilevers Cliff Notes over the cliff

of a dumpster   drops two used tubes of lip gloss 
—coral blaze & birthday suit   which plump my lips  

taste like thrift-shop frosting in Shreveport, 1960
at Aunt Millie’s funeral  —the coffin coated in hot-pink

carnations   and now designer cakes sell in pricey cafés
on Avenue A   where a cop thumbs his belt loops

and dreams a bit   —he’s my shrink & my shroud, 
winks & slips me 20 bucks to get him coffee, a donut

& late edition of the Post   and I let him rant, for sure   
how these rich girls will suffer too  —brush your gums  

pay your taxes   —I have a little business selling orphaned
heels the girls abandon when they spill out of bars 

—mismatched pairs only 50 a pop from my yellow cart 
and I dress in faux Chanel, of course, and wash at Star-

bucks so nobody thinks “homeless”  —a Brand these days
without a zip code, tho the City gave me a Box P.O.

but weren’t we all a step in the shoeless exodus
from Leviticus to Psalms?  I still dream of Aunt Millie,

her sugary picnics, my boy laughing into tatters
under a magnolia —my willowy girl preening her gown

swinging like a bell   —her name, ‘Marguerite’, a hymn
I whisper to bathe me in filaments of sorrow

while Jesus bends blue over shards of my children
in the rosary window   —and this freshman (no hello)

politely asks if I can find a mate for her blue silk stiletto
and I tell her, first, I do have a name.  It is Mrs. Moore.

*

Native of Vouliagmeni, GREECE and Martha’s Vineyard, MA., Stelios Mormoris is CEO of SCENT BEAUTY, Inc., which markets beauty products worldwide.  Citizen of Greece and the U.S., Stelios was born in New York, and lived most of his adult life in Paris.

He received a B.A. in Architecture from Princeton University, and an M.B.A. from INSEAD [Institut d’Européen d’Administration des Affaires] in Fontainebleau, France.

He has been published in Agni, Beyond Words Literary Review, Book of Lit Matches, Crab Creek Review, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Eunoia Review,  Fourth River, Gargoyle, Good Life Review,  High Shelf Press,  Humana Obscura, Midwest Poetry Review,  Narrative Magazine, Nassau Literary Review,  Press, Spillway,  Sugar House Review,  Tupelo Quarterly,  Verse,  Whelk Walk Review and other literary journals.  

My thoughtful father

still comes with a piano under his arm
but he does not play
to avoid disturbing my poems.

Sometimes he brings a canvas,
an old brush, vivid memories of red
or blue, but he only draws with his black pen,

sitting far from my desk.  He does not want
the cat he draws from memory
to scratch my last stanza.

As much as my father tries, he fails
to remain quiet, his unplayed sonata
still louder than my words, his cat

still fussing with the brush. I can tell
from his long sighs, they are not friends.
I suspect they met after he died.

Paper Boats

We’d sail paper boats along a sidewalk curb, after a heavy rain, until
they turned again into newspaper pages, moored at the sewer mouth.

Unfulfilled promises turned some of us into resentful sailors,
and the weight of reality made the rest of us inconsolable explorers.

When we folded the coarse paper into vessels a filthy puddle
was still a river, the muck the water dragged an undiscovered continent.

The Bare Bones of a Fairytale

Once upon a time you are born,
and, suddenly, you are a fawn summoned

from your forest, to a far far-away-land
where they speak the language of the hunters

you were spared from.  Your life becomes
about the sound of the breaking of a dry twig,

twitching between being naïve and being alert,
pretending to be calm, but still too afraid

to realize you are a young deer able to speak.

*

Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Buenos Aires, and adopted by New York. His poems appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Hanging Loose Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal and Louisville Review, among many others in the United States, as well as international publications such as Impspired (UK), Hong Kong Review (Hong Kong, SAR), and The Wild Word (Germany). His work received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and his chapbook, “Contraband,” was published in 2022. He’s also a Guest Editor for The Banyan Review, and currently finishing the manuscript for his next book of poems.

*

Stella Hayes is the author of two poetry collections, Father Elegies (What Books Press, 2024) and One Strange Country (What Books Press, 2020). She grew up in Brovary, a suburb outside of Kyiv, Ukraine, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Hayes earned an M.F.A. in poetry from NYU, where she taught in the undergraduate creative writing program and served as poetry editor and assistant fiction editor of Washington Square Review. Her work has appeared in Image, Poet Lore, The Poetry Project, Four Way Review, Stanford University Press, and Spillway, among others. Hayes is a contributing editor at Tupelo Quarterly.

*

Mary Pacifico Curtis writes poetry, memoir and literary criticism, and is the author of Between Rooms(2016) and The White Tree Quartet (2018) and a memoir, Understanding Moonseed (2022).  She has had a Silicon Valley career in PR and branding, and as an entrepreneur and VC. Mary lives with her husband, two dogs and wildlife that share their terraced California home. Her first full length poetry collection, Hawk’s Cry, was published in 2023 by Finishing Line Press.

Andalusia

At the train station in Córdoba, we rented an aging
Gray Renault and drove to the mountains, the car’s
Maintenance light flashing red the whole time.
From both sides of the road, rows of olive trees
Extended their camouflaged limbs, saluting
The afternoon sun, while small rivers carried
Dust and run-off to the south.
On the hill above Almodóvar del Río, the towers
Of a castle, mirage-like, stood without blinking. 
The highway pointed north, and the engine strained
Until I shifted to a lower gear.  Then—again,
On both sides of the road—there were orange groves,
White flowers and early fruit, the scent
Of oranges all around us and inside
Our rented car.

In Puebla de los Infantes, lunch was almost over
When we found a parking space on a street
Cut into the side of a hill, a row of cars perched
At 45 degrees, brakes firmly engaged.
One restaurant was still open.  We ate
Quickly—Ximena’s reading was in less than
An hour.  ¿Dónde está la biblioteca, por favor?
“Drive down the hill and ask someone else,” two
Andalusian ladies replied.  By chance, we saw
The sign, and a man exercising a brown
Stallion by the parking lot.  Ximena read well,
Poems about her country, her parents, our life
In Miami.  The crowd was happy to hear her. 
She’d come all the way from Colombia, where
There are also mountains, but instead of olive
Trees and oranges, there are mangoes and bananas,
Guerrillas and paramilitaries.
Another poet gave her a copy of his book, and
We drove back to Córdoba in the dark.
I stopped at a gas station to buy bananas
And oranges.

Reading the Classics

There was a used bookstore just above
86th Street—I don’t remember
The name—where I overheard someone
Say the Greeks had no word for “success.”
It was at a time in my life when
I didn’t feel particularly
Successful.  My marriage had become
(Don’t lie—it always had been) a string
Of ugly fights.  Each time, we wondered
If the words we’d said meant there was no
Going back, no forgetting this was
What we both really felt.  The people
Who lived above us would comment through
The ventilation shafts, imitate
Our insults and laugh.  They also liked
To play songs from Camelot and sing
Along.  The woman next door received
Visitors, men who strangely brought bags
Of groceries.  She’d put on music
With a loud bass, and I’d see them leave
Later when I went to walk the dog.
Her boyfriend waited outside, either
Sitting on the steps or in his car.
Eventually, they moved, and a
Korean family who’d bought the
Bodega on Columbus moved in.
I started taking Greek classes at
The New School.  I remember the sun
Setting on Fifth Avenue in the
Summer, neon lights of restaurants
And bars, moments when the streets emptied,
When it felt good to walk to the class
Where we’d translate some lines of Plato,
Heraclitus, or Sophocles, and
Nobody mentioned the word “success.”

A Doppelgänger

                                    Ere Babylon was dust
            The magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
            Met his own image walking in the garden.
                                    Shelly, Prometheus Unbound

Borges met his younger self on a park bench
In Geneva.  Or, it might have been his older self;
These things are hard to figure out.  I had
A doppelgänger also, but not me at a different age.
I discovered him when I gave a reading once
At a bar in Boston.  Some people showed up
Expecting him and left when they realized
Their mistake.  We never met, but I’ve seen
His picture.  He had those long sideburns they
Call “mutton chops” that were popular back
In the 70s.  Sometimes, friends mistake his books
For mine, at least one book of poetry and a work,
I believe, on Eastern religious practices.  He
Traveled to India for sure, while I only know
Asia from museums.  I suspect he was the more
Intelligent of the two of us.  He could read Sanskrit
like Eliot, but I don’t know his poems.  I avoided
Them on purpose, afraid I’d meet myself, with
Whatever consequence that might entail.
It’s generally bad news to encounter your
Other self.  Still, a few nights ago, I read online
That he’d died last year.  I had to look away
From the screen.  He wasn’t that much older
Than I am.  Now, the only chance we’ll have
To meet will be on a park bench by Lake Geneva
Or walking in a garden in Babylon.

*

George Franklin is the author of seven poetry collections, including his recent: What the Angel Saw, What the Saint Refused from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions.  Individual poems have been published in Matter Monthly, Solstice, South Florida Poetry Journal, Rattle, Cagibi, New Ohio Review, The Threepenny Review, The Comstock Review, One Art, and Cultural Daily.  He practices law in Miami, is a translations editor for Cagibi and a guest editor for Sheila-Na-Gig Online, teaches poetry workshops in Florida prisons, and co-translated, along with the author, Ximena Gómez’s Último día/Last Day. In 2023, he was the first prize winner of the W.B. Yeats Poetry Prize, and his work has been featured on the public radio podcast The Slowdown.  His website: https://gsfranklin.com/

Variations on a René Char Riff

How to end this long, diluvial night
in a landscape scaled in grays?
Waves of grief can teach you to float.

You’ve lost a mother, a tidal
wave of friends to the death parade.
No end to this long, diluvial night.

You feel your self disrupted,
moored to prolonged despair.
Waves of grief can teach you to float

in their gaps, gifting you time,
breath and strength
to end this long, diluvial night.

Struggling against the dark, the tide,
your fingers navigate the way.
Waves can teach you to float

grief like a whale catching a current
of air, or a full moon’s watery face.
Drift to the end of this long, diluvial night.
Waves of grief can teach you to float.

Pastoral

Thomas Gray’s tomb lies under yew tree shade.
Resurrected from churchyard sun,
light is particle and wave.

Branches dating back to the ice age
have survived their trunks,
re-rooting for more yew tree shade.

Carved into English longbows and shaped
into Renaissance lutes despite toxic dust,
yews are chastened and chaste.

Legend has it that three seeds were placed
in Adam’s mouth before he was laid underground.
The yew branch planted to mark his grave

became a tree at Golgatha, the place
of the skull, where Jesus succumbed.
Love kills and saves,

like adjuvant taxol extracted from sacred
yew needles and bark—too much and your pump-
heart slackens, like ewes dreaming in shade.
Dosed, you’re celestial—ash and ray.

Lucid Dreamer

Maybe you’re the one falling,
the one helpless to stop what’s
set in motion or stilled

into pirouettes, and the villain
smirking behind the juniper tree,
or maybe you’re the bluff itself,

the complicit clouds,
the air parting like a sea of reeds,
the descent transformed

into bottomless thought—
our collective unconsciousness
churning out similar dreams of chased

and chasing, gawking
naked in crowded streets,
or riding that tunneled dream

of repressed desire—
and if Aristotle was right
that dreamers sometimes know

they’re dreaming, brains stalled
between REM sleep and waking,
then can’t we rewrite the stories

we tell ourselves, maybe foil our own
most desperate plots to know finally
the dreamer from the dream?

Skipping the Leap

If it takes the Earth more time than we can spare
to complete its orbit around the Sun—
almost six extra hours, if rounding off—
and we never accounted for gains,
the seasons would shift, and in 700 years
there’d be snow in June in the Smokies,
though with wild fires and floods
there may not be a planet left to drift.
Where do those hours go before we get them
back each leap year—almost one full minute per day—
not enough for a power nap or the hour
we lose and gain from saving daylight,
pesky as a pound we try to shed for good.

Would those seconds lost each day
be enough to secure good habits for life,
like flossing teeth or touching toes,
doing squats to strengthen quads,
or massaging scalps to coax hair to grow?
Could those seconds have delayed
the truck that T-boned my cousin’s car,
reaching the crossroad too soon,
or have been enough to restart my ex’s heart
after skipping too many beats,
unlike when leaps are skipped every 400 years,
like rubato measures when tempo rights itself—
a little like robbing time.

*

Nancy Naomi Carlson won the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Author of sixteen titles (eleven translated), her poetry and translation books have been reviewed in The New York Times. A recipient of two NEA translation grants, she’s the Translations Editor for On the Seawall. Piano in the Dark (Seagull Books, 2023), a “Must-Read Editor’s Choice” from Poetry Daily, is her third full-length collection. Her translation of Djiboutian writer Abdourahman Waberi’s When We Only Have the Earth (University of Nebraska Press: African Poetry Book Series) arrives March, 2025.