Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published several poetry books including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields (Flutter Press 2014) and What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say and Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob (Kelsay Books 2021) and Survivors, Saints and Sinners forthcoming by Cyberwit.Her work has also appeared in Black Coffee Review, Terror House Review, Trouvaille Review, ONE ART,Mad Swirl, The Drabble, Gleam, Spillwords, Muddy River Review, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, Red Eft Review, The Five-Two and The Song Is…
Best Mom in the World
She dives like a swan in the blue
sky in her satin wedding gown
as her groom in black and white
tuxedo and shirt lifts her above
her head. Won’t we make beautiful
babies? she asks fingering the photo.
But you hate children. I remember
when we were rival reporters
attending parties on the weekend
and I was upstairs reading bedtime
stories to the children of the hosts
while she was hunting for Mr. Right.
After she is promoted as editor
of the social page and meets
the handsome architect
and trust fund baby, she flashes
a two carat diamond ring.
We can afford a houseful of kids.
We’ll just hire someone else
to take care of them. And I’m
not going to ruin my firm boobs
and flat stomach so we’ll pay
a surrogate to go through
morning sickness and labor pains.
I am surprised when years later
while visiting the San Diego Republic,
I spot her sitting in the break room
drinking coffee out of a mug, engraved:
Best Mom in the World, as she tells
me she is quitting to be a full time mom.
I gave two weeks notice today. I joined
the gym and signed up for Zumba, Yoga,
Pilates and Aerobics. Moms must be fit.
When I arrive for dinner at her four-story
home on the hill overlooking La Jolla
Beach, a middle-aged woman answers the door.
Madame is soaking in the bubble bath
before she dresses for dinner. She escorts
me into the family room where a young
fit brunette in a pony tail and jogging suit
is putting shoes on the toddler. Four
blond boys greet me with a curtsy and a smile.
I play scrabble with the six- and eight-year-olds
while bouncing the toddler on my knee
as the four-year-old stares with saucer eyes.
Whiskey, vodka or rum? the tall suit
says as he sticks his head in the room.
Just a glass of ice water will be fine.
The kitchen door swings open and a man
in a chef’s apron and hat exits with my water
as the scent of meatloaf and mushrooms
mixes with musk and lavender on her skin
as madame waltzes down the stairs
in stiletto heels and turquoise gown.
We’re going to the country club, she announces.
handing me a slinky red dress that fits like a stocking.
"bio: jck hnry is a queer writer living a semi-normative life in the high desert of SE California. recent works have appeared at terror house magazine, ariel chart, raven cage, lucifer's retreat, beatnik cowboy, and others. in 2021 his latest collection, driving w/crazy, was released by PUNK HOSTAGE PRESS. for more please go to jackhenry.wordpress.com."
Donny Winter, lives in Saginaw, Michigan and found his voice as an LGBTQ+ poet back in 2011, when his first poem, “An American Crucifix,” a poem remembering the Matthew Shepard tragedy, got published in Central Michigan University’s magazine The Central Review. Years later, being empowered by mentors after finishing his undergraduate program, he journeyed to University of Central Missouri to hone his craft as a poet, achieving a Master of Arts in English. In late 2016, he found his home at Delta College back home in Michigan. He currently teaches creative writing, manages the college’s literary magazine, Pioneer Post, and hopes to help students find their poetic voices also.
During the global pandemic, Winter has produced two, full-length collections of poems, Carbon Footprint (2020) and Feats of Alchemy (2021) published by Alien Buddha Press. The success of both books allowed him to connect with a diverse and encouraging online writing community, culminating in being connected with Florida musician, Ryan Bozeman (brotherwell). Having watched one of Winter’s poem performances, Bozeman contacted him to begin collaborating on transforming some of his poems into songs. Winter eagerly agreed, and throughout 2021, both artists produced three collaborative tracks.
During summer 2021, after creating the concept for a spoken word album titled, “Recovery,” Bozeman invited Winter to participate in the twelve-poet line-up. Both artists realized that through collaboration, poetry, and music, catharsis could be reached, opening the door to healing. Bozeman shares that “‘Recovery’ takes so many forms and offers a wide palate of expression, [and has] a connective thread weaving throughout [which offers] something cohesive.” Currently, Winter is featured in two tracks on the album, one being the grungy, goth-rock-style song “Feats of Alchemy,” and the other being the final track on the album, “Reforged from Fallen Stars.” In his time working with the poets on “Recovery,” Bozeman reflects, “I really appreciate how open, honest, and raw these poems are. I felt the weight of responsibility to do each poem its proper justice, and I am honored that each poet trusted me with their work.”
Regarding his time collaborating on the “Recovery” project, Winter establishes that “it’s been the highlight of my writing career so far. Ryan’s talent is unparalleled, and the way he was able to transform my poems into sweeping songs was a dream come true for me.” He believes that this project serves as a symbol of solidary, because “together, poetry and music can help us better understand and navigate a perilous world where pandemics rage, where the sovereignty of countries are at risk, and where social atrocities happen continuously. Ultimately, recovery isn’t always pretty, nor is it always pleasant. However, recovery becomes an easier road to travel when it’s done with others – that is what this album is all about.” Bozeman feels similarly and adds that “no matter what, I will consider this project a success because…it achieved its original goal – to connect and collaborate with poets around the country… we found solace in each other, knowing that we aren’t walking alone on this journey of recovery.”
Check out the brotherwell collaborations with Donny Winter:
Chris Bodor, lives in St. Augustine, Florida and has been writing poetry consistently since 1993, when he started a job in the Film Department at an art college in New York City. He traveled to and from work each day for three hour round trip. He soon became know as the "Train of Though Commuter" because of the volumes of poetry he hand wrote into spiral notebooks during his back and forth ride. In 2003, he derailed and moved to Florida with his family and his wife's parents. After a seven year torturous dry spell, Chris set up a PA speaker and a microphone at a local coffee chop and invited the community to share their spoken words. Under Chris' direction, the Ancient City Poets Open Mic has been running consistently on the last Sunday of every month since August 2009. During the global pandemic they migrated to an online gathering. A YouTube channel was created to document the St. Augustine poetry scene.
During the early days of lockdown in April of 2020, Chris was contacted by a local musician named Ryan Bozeman. AKA brotherwell, Ryan has been writing and recording music for the past twenty-five years and has been involved in numerous musical projects. Ryan views songwriting as a type of therapy and spends several hours a night writing and recording. Key influences include The Beatles, Radiohead, Frightened Rabbit, and Sigur Ros, as well as 90s grunge and alternative rock.
Ryan asked Chris if he would help round up a dozen poets to collaborate on a series of songs about recovery. Why recovery? “Landing on the theme of recovery can be seen as a sign of the times." said Ryan. "Whether it’s the trauma of COVID-19, the exhaustive forced hibernation of quarantine, the corrosive nature of our current political state, or any of the battle scars from lives well-lived, it seems as though we are all in some state of recovery." Ryan is in his own state of recovery and realized that collaboration with other poets and artists was a healthy way to come out of his shell.
Chris can certainly write about the subject of recovery. “My last drink was in October of 2008." said Chris "My life had become unmanageable, and I asked for help. I got the help I need from a group of friends who were also seeking recovery. During COVID-19 insolation, Ryan turned one of my poems into a song. I was blown away with what he was able to do with my words. This project is very cathartic, and I think it speaks to many.”
~ ~ ~
Check out the brotherwell collaboration with Chris Bodor:
A collaborative project that blends words of poets with the music of indie/alternative musician brotherwell from St. Augustine, Florida. All proceeds of this project will be donated to recovery-based charities.
Matt McGuirk teaches and lives with his wife and two daughters in New Hampshire. He was a BOTN 2021 nominee and has poems and stories published in various literary magazines. His debut hybrid collection of poems and stories, Daydreams, Obsessions, Realities, came out with Alien Buddha Press in late November of 2021 and isavailable on Amazon, linked at the end of the bio and also linked on his website.Follow him on Twitter: @McguirkMatthew and Instagram: @mcguirk_matthew.
The Salvage Yard
Walking through aisles lined with twisted metal
looking for something
salvageable, something to part out
or
something that can be buffed out
and might shine again in
all that is mangled and dull.
A bumper that once reflected light,
now wears a grass necklace.
A door that was opened for a date,
an act of chivalry
is now hanging lazy, unable to offer any gesture.
Leather seats cracked with spiderwebs
from too much time in the sun
and an undercarriage rotted by rust
from salt spattered winter roads
would need to be released
or replaced.
The sun crested between the waiting hilltops,
pulling in hues of orange and yellow
and washed across a pristine, dust covered windshield
aching for the wind of a highway at 70.
I feathered the bills in my pocket out
and thought about the window down
and the radio cranked.
The Salvage Yard collaboration with Brotherwell.
Original poem published with Words and Whispers Journal
Teaching Satire Simpsons’ Style
Satire is something not everyone gets,
but isn’t that the way with most things?
I give a pretest and a few students can define it,
but the majority leave it blank, put a question mark or guess,
but I expect that anyways.
We’ll get to Stalin, Lenin, the Russian Revolution
and the rise of the Soviet Union
eventually,
but sometimes they just need something in their world.
I tell them, “The Simpsons is a satire!”
They just look at me,
not believing until they see, or hear in this case.
The Simpsons are my go to and they know that,
so they know there’s a point, there’s always a point.
“It makes fun of family issues.
Homer is stupid and accident prone
and works as a nuclear safety inspector,
in charge of keeping a whole town from blowing up.”
They nod and I know they’re getting it.
“After work, he goes to the bar and gets drunk
and what does he do when he gets home?”
They lean in and I know they’re hooked.
“Strangles his son! But we all laugh. So really the Simpsons are dealing with
heavy issues: education system, addiction, abuse.”
Sometimes it just takes something a little closer to home
to get the point across.
Sometimes the nightly news can’t always start a conversation
and we need to use our daily laughs to do it instead.
It is possible for poetry to be both readable and literary, strong enough of voice to be almost conversational, yet sophisticated enough in technique to pleasure the educated reader. In this full-length collection by Marc Vincenz, (Unlikely Books) the reader is presented with not only the new work of a well-published writer, but two critical essays at the volume’s final pages, positioning the book as also existing as a critical text for literary study.
The work is divided into seven sections, all named, with six sections for the poems themselves. While these sections are chapbook length, the section names are of a macabre nature, with four named for the corpses of wild born beings, and two for the sort of found trash prosaic to strolls. Of the two concluding essays (by Robert Archambeau and Philip Nikolayev),it is Archambeau who refers to Vincenz’s “typical, despoiled landscape” (127) as a binary seeking enlightenment through a kind of Jungian, intuitive process. A reader moderately aware of symbol structures will discover much meat in this collection: the angelic number of chapters is a strong clue of the symbolic path of the poems, a path that Nikolayev calls “a personal manifesto” (133). But while both essayists cite lines and sections that employ strong symbolism, their view of these symbols is either “a brief flash of satori” (Archambeau, 128), or “observations about insects and birds and other chitchat” (Nikolayev, 140).
Perhaps a brief conversation can be had about the symbols themselves, perceived by Vincenz and repeated throughout the work. While the fluctuating use of pronouns might interest some readers—how sometimes the second person seems very specific, and other times a general address—or how the plethora of death imagery (“And so we climb/ Deep into the tomb”, 113-114) could yield full study alone, a view beyond the chitchat about birds is also revealing.A casual indexing of references of birds involves some two dozen occurrences throughout the book, with a half a dozen utilizations of egg.
Vincenz directs one work here to a specific bird, “Hanging Out the Window for a Sparrow” (80), written as a prose poem. Rather than referencing the avian being as symbolic evidence for a meditative point, the poem makes its metaphysical point to the sparrow: “It rained on all of us, even you with your talons, even where the mad moth whirls or the wounded spring curls;” finally including birds as along for the ride, instead of a landscape the reader sees as a kind of fly-over state.
In the section dedicated to the tell of an avian accident, "Feathers of a Dead Turkey," centered in the collection and comprising of eight pieces, the opening poem “Of Cargo” Vincenz nestles this collection’s gothic meditation. Immediately setting the season, “In autumn”, which birdwatchers know to be legalized murder period for the species, the poem then follows a discourse of associative symbols, except these are references to human myth, concluding with violent Agrippina “her hairpins and hair/ // Overflowing in daises” (60). Later, in “Arrowheads”, two humans, apparently in bed, muse “Later still, sighing, you say:/ ‘How does one get away with murder?/ What century is this? What era?’/ Outside, the towers wobble” (65) Maybe it is here that this work’s migrating thought might roost. Any reader will respond to a symbolic investigation of the noun “tower”, making it a potent symbol. Beyond modern history, the easy mythology of tarot positions a tower as a symbol of expensive endeavor. Combining this with murder creates the sort of modern context of our ordinary anxieties. A view to the poem’s horizon has the reader realizing that this is a probable post-coital conversation. The poem’s title references objects from a pre-colonized human civilization, and the poem’s conclusion is a view of a squirrel—but not an ordinary squirrel, a mutated being who “sits curved, /His blue eyes trained on the soil.” The poem has dealt us a hand in this flock of symbols; the reader is subtly encompassed in an awareness of humanity’s sins.
The physical volume has a number of conclusions: a photograph of objects that named the chapters, a prose poem, “One More for the Road”, the two essays and a two-page list of the author’s previous works. Viewing this as either five or seven numerological points from which the reader can exit the book, the parting words of the author “Emerge, Sweet Creature, and light up the way”(119); of the critics , “spirit of exploration”( Archambeau) and“ a mighty personal lyric chord”(Nikolayev) are a call to carry the book’s song with us, a sophisticated opera about a broken-hearted man in a landscape of death.
Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago.
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