GAS Featured Poet: Arvilla Fee

Arvilla Fee teaches English and is the managing editor for the San Antonio Review. She has published poetry, photography, and short stories in numerous presses, including Calliope, North of Oxford, Rat’s Ass Review, Mudlark, and many others. Her poetry books, The Human Side and This is Life, are available on Amazon. Arvilla loves writing, photography and traveling, and she never leaves home without a snack and water (just in case of an apocalypse). For Arvilla, writing produces the greatest joy when it connects us to each other. To learn more about her work, you can visit her website: https://soulpoetry7.com/

Neurodivergent Processing

 

people pressing,

elbows and shoulders

jockeying for position;

there are so many,

too many,

and suddenly, I can’t breathe,

the air is hot and humid

with a million moving lips,

and there are lights everywhere,

florescent overhead,

luminescent signs saying open,

saying 50% off sale,

saying buy one get one free,

and the noise rises

up, up, up to the vaulted ceilings,

creating a ringing in my ears,

so many voices and sounds,

chatter, laughter,

the squeak of tennis shoes,

the man at a kiosk

asking if I want to try a sample,

a sample of what, I don’t know;

I can’t look at him,

can’t think, can’t hear;

I’m drowning in a sensory pool,

the water closing in over my head,

the smell of fish and pizza and tacos

nearly making me ill;

I strip off my jacket

as if the release of this one layer

will somehow free my body, my mind,

but it doesn’t—so, I walk outside,

leaving the crescendo behind

and stand, eyes closed, in the muted air.

Room to Breathe

 

I broke free of skyscrapers,

            free of concrete,

            free of freeways,

            free of suits,

office-gray cubicles,

long lines at the coffee shop,

overpriced bagels and lattes;

some called it a mid-life crisis;

I called it coming to my senses,

although I have to admit

the new yellow convertible

smacked of middle-40s.

But I never felt more authentically

me—the first time I saw a sunset

free of obstructions,

free of constraints,

free to blaze like flames

in the wide Nebraska sky.

 

You Know

 

You never really know someone,

they say—but you do know;

you know when he slips out at night,

you hear the squeak of the hinges;

you know he’ll be down on 5^th street

and that there are dealers and users

congregating like brothers and sisters,

lighting up, blowing out, snorting;

you know he’ll come back high;

he’ll hug you and be sloppy-mouthed,

pupils shrunk to pinpoint black;

you know that he’ll deny everything

in the morning—make that noon-ish,

when he finally rises and breathes

unbrushed breath over your shoulder

while you are trying to eat your lunch;

you know, but don’t say anything,

that he will not look for a job today,

nor any day after because that is work,

and he doesn’t have time for that—

you know he simply lives

to keep his hands from shaking

to keep the demons off his back.

 

Meet Me by the River

 

where the bank is muddy

and the water is cool

we’ll go on pretending

our daughter’s in school

 

we’ll imagine her home

at the stroke of four

hungry for dinner

banging the door

 

we’ll talk about boys

we’ll talk about plans

she’ll practice the tuba

she plays in the band

 

I won’t watch your face

if you don’t watch mine

we’ll go on pretending

things are just fine

 

that day didn’t happen

the freak with the gun

didn’t unload a clip

and put a hole in our sun

 

we never got the call

that ended our world

we’ll head back home,

see our little girl

 

meet me by the river

let it drown our tears;

what do we have left

but empty-nest years

Runner

 

legs stretched              long, lanky—

sweat drawing circles under armpits,

a heart beats, beats, beats, beats

in rhythm to trainers slapping pavement.

She’s going somewhere;

happiness lies

just over the next hill,

or is it the one after that?

The hills all look alike,

that row of pines no different

than the last,

but she picks up speed,

forges ahead;

perhaps one day she will outrun

herself.

 

GAS Featured Poet: Ace Boggess

 

"Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble." 

Freudian Slip

 

 

Sometimes while telling a story about my early days 

in prison, without thinking, I say during my first semester—

a Freudian slip like in the joke about the airport guy 

requesting two pickets to Tittsburgh &, 

like in the joke, it’s kind of funny & kind of sad. 

That was where I began my second education. 

My new university an aquarium full of piranhas, 

I was the clumsy, curious cat who fell in, 

somehow made it out with a few wounds 

that turned to scars I lick & lick & can’t erase. 

I learned a lot during my first semester: 

how pungent scents of watermelon hooch & 

pepper spray will cause a man to weep 

into the collar of his undershirt; 

how one must turn his head from the fist 

that hunts his face; not to mention 

how noises of voices, slamming cards, &

radio static won’t go away. 

To sleep, one finds silence within, 

a place of peace in a warzone—

Places of Peace in Warzones the title of a course 

during my first semester, which I say & 

shake my head at the joke so like the other joke 

that ends with the line You’ve ruined my life.

 

 

Anthology

 

 

So curious to see these poets’ early work

so old & out of touch I don’t connect with it.

 

So, Ashbery already wrote his inside jokes

he alone was on the inside of.

 

So, there’s James Tate writing normal lines

with none of the fantasia of his later mind.

 

So much so-so that must have been magnificent

when rhymes, angels, & ancient Greeks called to us.

 

So: Rich, Meredith, Merwin, Valentine—

a lot to take in, marveling at how they grew

 

so far beyond these early perceived greatnesses,

enchanted then by their sex lives &

 

so enthralled with love, loving, beloveds.

I’m glad I’m taking this journey with them

 

so I can say I’ve travelled in a time machine, &

oh the things I’ve seen & soon forgotten.

 

 

 

Impostor Syndrome

 

 

Do marathon winners doubt themselves, 

believe if they were better

they would’ve crossed the line a minute faster,

see failure in success, their trophies

too small, their payouts token?

 

What about farmers? Why are their rows so crooked?

As the sun rises above their plots

like a laughing emoji, surely they dread

how small & inferior their ears of corn must be, 

how green & hard their tomatoes. 

 

Writers & artists can’t be the only ones

who look at their work & say, I’ve never

created anything beautiful,

challenging, magnificent, or worthwhile.

 

Consider the divorce lawyer 

whose briefs present too much sentiment,

the trucker hauling ass a bit too slowly 

through the mountains

as if driving a tractor-trailer made of stone.

 

What of the surgeon cutting into a patient’s brain?

Do we want her disbelieving, 

doubting skills she acquired over years?

 

Here we are with our pens & paints,

unable to excise tumors or harvest a sizeable yield.

 

The sun above our heads keeps laughing, &

we want to lose control of our wheels

doing sixty on I-68 at a six-percent grade.

 

GAS Featured Poet: Yuan Changming

 

Yuan Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include 12 Pushcart nominations for poetry and 2 for fiction besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline and 2109 other publications across 51 countries. A  poetry judge for Canada's 44th National Magazine Awards, Yuan began writing and publishing fiction in 2022.

The Counting of My Remaining Days

Even if from January to December

I have only twelve days to live, even

If from Monday to Sunday I have

Only seven days to function, or even

If from Spring to Winter I have only

Four days to breathe, my heart will

Keep pumping blood to every vessel 

To nourish every cell at my synapses

So I can feel you for the last three

Days: yesterday, today, and tomorrow

Mayuhe Revisited: a 50-Word Romance

Behind the shadow 

Of this tall pine

I left all my dreams

About your face & 

Smiles for a bright 

Future (with a rosier 

Romance) ahead, but

Only to return here

Five decades later

To join you in body 

As in spirit, from 

The opposite sides

Of this wild world

 "Author's note: These two poems are inspired by and devoted to Helena Qi Hong (祁红)." 

GAS Featured Poet: J.R. Solonche

 

Nominated for the National Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of 38 books of poetry and coauthor of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.

 

 

AFTERGLOW

 

I asked the poet what her poem 

was about because at first I thought 

it was about sex, and then I thought it 

was about a nuclear war, and then I thought 

it was about sex again. I thought it was about 

sex because of the lightning and the tides 

ebbing and flowing and the crater and, 

of course, because of the title, “Afterglow,”

but then I changed my mind and thought 

it was about a nuclear war because of 

the lightning and the tides ebbing and 

flowing and the crater and especially because 

the stuff that filled the crater was green 

which I took to be new grass growing

after the nuclear war and semen is yellow, 

not green, and because of the title, “Afterglow,” 

and I changed my mind and thought it was 

really about sex after all because of the ending 

with its Ah and Oh, aftermath and afterglow, 

which so reminded me of the lovely light 

of Edna Millay’s both-ends-burning candle, 

which is about sex. So I asked the poet 

what her poem was about, and she stared 

at me and said, It’s self-evident, and I said, 

You’re right, I said. It is, I said, How

stupid of me to ask, and she stared at me 

and said, That, too, is self-evident, and she 

turned away to talk to someone else, and 

I was left there in the corner, alone in 

the afterglow of the sex of our nuclear war.

 

 

 

 

THE RAIN

 

Driving in the rain this morning,

I saw just how miraculous a thing

 

water is, hydrogen and oxygen, neither

of which is liquid at room temperature,

 

two atoms of one plus one atom of the other,

that’s all it is, that’s all water is, our water,

 

and here it was streaming down from the sky,

this liquid of liquids, this miracle of miracles,

 

filling the room of the world from my window

at room temperature, flooding each of those

 

forty minutes with as much a miracle

as one of forty days and forty nights was,

 

or one that was a sea parted down the middle

to become a door opened on the opposite side 

 

to the opposing miracle of forty years

of wandering in a place without water.

 

 

                                                                                    

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH GARDEN HOSE

 

It is dusk.

The sun notices you through the branches.

 

It shows no interest in you beyond

adding your shadow to the shadows.

 

You water the new plants:

Day lily, spirea, boxwood, knockout rose, barberry, sage.

 

You hold the garden hose straight up.

The water leaps straight up.

 

The water is a fountain leaping straight up.

Then the water falls.

 

The water is cascades of silvery bows.

It is dusk.

 

You are the god of rain,

pornographer of plenitude.

 

You are the god of rain,

masturbator of multitudes.

 

You are fecundity.

You are father of flowers.

                                                                                                

 

SIX TIMES I PASSED THE DEAD SKUNK ON THE ROAD

 

Six times I passed the dead skunk on the road.

Six times I thought the same black thoughts.

Six times I thought the same white thoughts.

Six times I felt the breeze through the window.

Six times I wondered what you were doing.

Six times I noticed the reddening of the maples.

Six times I smelled the black smell of skunk.

Six times I smelled the white smell of skunk.

Six times I remembered where I was going.

Six times I decided on cremation.

Six times I turned up the volume of the radio.

Six times I glanced up at the sky to see the gathering clouds.

Six times I reminded myself sixty-one really is not old.

Six times I cursed my stupidity for wasting gas.

Six times I tried to remember the first line of that poem by Lowell.

Six times I wondered if the crows would be first.

Six times I wondered if the vultures would be first.

Six times I scratched the back of my hand.

Six times I said the word skunk six times.

 

 

UNTITLED POEM WRITTEN UNDER AN UNTITLED MOBILE BY ALEXANDER CALDER

 

Alexander, do we create

from the little we possess

in order to possess more?

 

Or do we create from

our overabundance

in order to possess less?

 

Sometimes you want to lose your balance.

Sometimes you need to lose your mind. Hate

it even. O serene, O silver cloud afloat

 

in this domed ceiling of sky,

whose body do you balance?

Whose mind are you? Or is this poise

 

of yours forever nothing more than pose, pure

pose facing one way, then facing another?