Dear Reader,

If you want to see what I've been up to lately, you may enjoy--I know I do--reading Blast Furnace.   Look for my poems "Moon," "As Wordsworth Wandered" & "White" in Vol. 3, Issue 4.  What a great magazine!

Since you're online anyway, why not head over to Red Booth Review?  You'll find among other fine poetry "Everything Must Go" in Vol. 10.1.   By the way, I appropriated the title from an unrelated poem in my chapbook Here's How, which I present below for the sake of disambiguation:

Everything Must Go

Hand held flyer fluttering in the wind
of an overhead fan, Dick Holicker,
store manager, knew the intoxicating
effect of sales. Head swirling, free
arm curling around the waist

of Gina Duvet, junior assistant,
he supported, as she, in each step
up the ladder, defied gravity
to procure for an elderly couple
the bottle stopper twin-pack

advertised on page 5. Having ascended
the last rung, Gina stretched
on tippy toes, teetering like a B-
movie heroine on a precipice
overlooking waves

of shoppers along narrow aisles.
Diverting his gaze from her royal
blue skirt inching northward,
Dick reflected, fluorescent
overhead caroming off his bald,

daydreaming dome, that he’d known
Gina in a previous life, firelight
dancing the hully-gully, their union
cast upon the cave walls
of his skull, carved

for the ages in granite. Fate,
though, while technically still
on the clock, had snuck out
back for a quick smoke, blowing
discontented rings

of the overworked & underpaid, just
as a family’s full cart, jam-smeared
clan clinging to its sides, awk-
wardly squeezed past. Dick
glimpsed in the clearing ahead, the freeze

of the evolving fall, but couldn’t
stop—no matter how
his heart raced—time’s imperfect
circle, the wobbly, squeaky
buggy wheel as it tipped

the ladder, her toe slipping. Gina
sprawled at his feet, sobbed
& held her ankle. Dick
bent, grimaced &
grunted apologetic concern, daubing

blood from her chin
with his finger while his other
hand clutched the flyer, opened to bras
& thongs, ever tighter, as if to stave
off a swelling, primitive urge.

While a poet giving two poems the same title isn't unheard of, if the above poem were to appear elsewhere--should I be so fortunate--I may want to change the title, so if you have any suggestions, pass them along. As always, your comments would be appreciated.

Before I go--I have to buy a new tire & have my car aligned--you may also want to check RBR's archives, specifically Vol.3.1-3, to read "Bunch of Junk About Chrome," which you may recall from Nearing Narcoma.

Regards,

Matt

P.S. Where's my head?! I almost forgot to mention a couple more recent poems, "As the Sun Came Up" & "Gathering Darkness," appear among the wide selection of poetry, fiction & art in Deep Water Literary Journal (2014 Issue 1). It's a fairly new magazine that you should definitely check out.

P.P.S.  Many thanks to the editors at Deep Water, RBR & Blast Furnace for providing a venue for my work.

Comments

Matt Morris said…
Errata:

In “As Wordsworth Wandered,” no stanza break should occur between lines 10-11.

In “As the Sun Came Up,” lines 11-12 should read, “At first I thought it was trans- / migration, then no.”