Each passing day of a winter is a day closer to the spring issue of 2RV, with new poems by Jesse DeLong, Lindsay Adkins, Bill Barone, Catherine Connell, Patrick Lawler, Keagan LeJeune, Alice Mills, Vi Khi Nao, Edward Nudleman, William M. Rivera, and James Valvis.
Table of Days by James Deeb
Meanwhile, here’s just one of the remarkable poems from the upcoming issue.
Catherine Connell
Desolate, My Desolate
Yet again I am uncertain which animal is mine.
The birdhouse and barn have blown away
in the tall winds and dust.
My kittens and horses are wild and the soft hay is gone.
It is the most loved gone.
The flown gate and high lamp burrow
to kindling and rust.
The wind has a will to summon its own.
My companions have tired and the soft days are gone.
Catherine Connell is a university administrator in metropolitan Boston, Massachusetts.
Soon in the Spring issue of The 2River View: new poems by Jesse DeLong, Lindsay Adkins, William Barone, Catherine Connell, Patrick Lawler, Keagan LeJeune, Alice Mills, Vi Khi Nao, Edward Nudleman, William Rivera, and Jame Valvis; and art by James Deeb.
Read in the New Year with the Winter 2015 issue of The 2River View: new poems by Randolph Bridgeman, Sarah De Sousa, Maria Eriksson, Joy Laden, Joshua Estanislao Lopez, Heidi McKinley, Rajiv Mohabir, Charles Rafferty, Mark Schoenknecht, Sahara Smith, and David Wright; and photography by Drew Campbell.
Visit 2River late next week to read the 18.4 (Summer 2014) issue of The 2River View, with new poems by Bradley Fest, Kathryn Haemmerle, April Krivensky, Kristin LaFollette, Michael Lauchlan, Gloria Monaghan, Darren Morris, Sherry O’Keefe, Jacqueline Dee Parker, Sally Van Doren, and Kami Westhoff; plus new art by Heidi Daub. Meanwhile, enjoy this selection from the upcoming issue.
Sally Van Doren
Justice
The devil trains mother
To train her troubled son
To use a semiautomatic rifle
And he shoots her first
In the face before he opens
Fire on the elementary school.
(Father and brother spared,
Having long since fled the dirtied
Nest.) In his memoirs, the devil cites
As one of his greatest achievements
The introduction of war weapons
As recreational toys in broken
Suburban households. That,
And the deprivation of the
Rights of a six-year-old
To advance to the second grade.
Really. Coming soon! The Spring 2014 issue of The 2River View, with new poems by Bindu Bansinath, Kristin Bassett, J. L. Conrad, Craig Cotter, Francis Daulerio, Jim Elsaesser, David Faldet, Mark Kliewer, Natasha Moni, Anne Nance, and Bethany Price; and photography by Drew Campbell.
Jump over to 2River late next week for the Spring 2014 issue of The 2River View, with new poems by Bindu Bansinath, Kristin Bassett, J. L. Conrad, Craig Cotter, Francis Daulerio, Jim Elsaesser, David Faldet, Mark Kliewer, Natasha Moni, Anne Nance, and Bethany Price; and photography by Drew Campbell. Meanwhile, here’s a teaser:
Francis Daulerio
Spring Hymn
And when the world came back
to life
I had to remind myself
that it was not
the same.
The blooms were
different;
some new,
some had split
and branched off
toward opposite sides of Heaven.
Some had not returned at all,
and I noticed their absence.
Francis Daulerio is an English teacher. His work has appeared in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Crack the Spine, Escarp, The Shot Glass Journal, and Whiskey Island.
Jump over to 2River next week for the Fall issue of The 2River View, with new poems byBrittany Barberino Evans, Benny Biesek, Bri Bruce, Christien Gholson, D.B. Goman, Romana Iorga, Elizabeth Majerus, Kelly Nelson, Annmarie O’Connell, Claudia Reinhardt, and Claudia Serea. Meanwhile, here’s a teaser:
Claudia Serea
The flower of blood
After Imran Qureshi’s installation at the Met, New York, 2013
1.
A flower of blood opens
on the rooftop overlooking Central Park
and another one on the asphalt below,
next to the black tire marks
and the little girl’s slipper.
Sirens wail
every time a flower of blood
opens in the city,
in a hospital room,
or at home,
in my father’s heart.
Other times,
it opens in silence,
in the face of the dying child
and the face of the mother holding him,
and in the mouth of the gun
that his brother holds.
2.
100,000 flowers open in Syria,
a field of bleeding poppies,
and in every square of every city,
on every street,
and tv screen,
with every scream and explosion.
And the world watches the petals unfurl,
the breathtaking spectacle,
again and again.
No one can stop it,
and the world blooms
with pain.
A flower of blood opens on earth
and you can see it from space.
Claudia Serea immigrated from Romania to the United States in 1995. Her work has appeared in 5 a.m., Apple Valley Review, Meridian, New Letters, and Word Riot. Her books include Angels & Beasts, The System, and A Dirt Road Hangs From the Sky.
Things Impossible to Swallow by Pamela Garvey is the 24th entry in then 2River Chapbook Series. Here’s the title poem of the chapbook:
Things Impossible to Swallow
Her own ecstasy when he tied her
to the bed, and she begged as the rope
wore at the skin of her wrists.
Did she really lap up every touch, every
word that soured her own laugh?
She scrubbed floors and tubs and crawled
around looking for loose change.
She breathed in his logic: a vapor,
a mercury leaching into veins, into
the fatty tissue that holds it in.
That smack she held in with the rising temperatures
of work, pay, poor and no time
to read. She’d become stupid, he said. And the heat
to hit him seared her silent.
Still she returned daily to the mirror he held for her.
Herself accused by that image yet ready
to swear over bibles.
But whose story did she tell? Who threatened
to leave? Was that her pounding on doors,
bills wound into fists?
And her, pleading:
a dog that doesn’t even know when it’s full?
You know that’s a fine poem, so jump over now to read the other poems in the chapbook.
Muddy Bank 