Thursday, October 19, 2023

GAS Featured Poet: Jeff Weddle


Jeff Weddle grew up Prestonsburg, a small town in the Appalachian foothills of eastern Kentucky. He has lived, worked, and/or studied in New Hampshire, Maine, Tennessee, Mississippi and, for almost twenty years, Alabama, where he teaches in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama. Over the years he has been a newspaper reporter, a radio disc jockey, a fry cook, a Tae Kwon Do teacher, an English teacher, a public library director, and a barfly, among other things. He is the author of sixteen books, most of which are available through Amazon and other online retailers, but the two publications of which he is most proud would be difficult for most people to acquire. The first of these is a poem which a friend had tattooed on her arm without first mentioning it, and that one is hard to beat. The second is his selected poems, VRITMË NËSE KE KOQE, translated into Albanian by the esteemed Fadil Bajraj and published in Kosovo by SabaiumBB. As with the tattoo, one would have difficulty trying to find this book in an online bookstore. Not that anyone asked, but Jeff strongly advocates “The Six Golden Rules of Writing,” proposed by novelist Ernest J. Gaines, for anyone seeking to improve their work. These are: “Read, read, read and write, write, write.” He believes anything beyond these rules, other than lived experience, just gets in the way. Jeff’s writing has been influenced by many of the old dogs, though Barry Hannah, Richard Brautigan, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, Kenneth Patchen, Etgar Keret, Lyn Lifshin and Charles Bukowski lead the pack.

 

 

 


 

Ménage a Trois

 

Bear with me, please. After all, this is only a movie.

The story is lewd, but that is so often the case.

Boy meets girl. Girl meets girl.

All the drinking and sweat.

Pictures torn from old magazines.

The girl — the first one — has a limp from an undefined mishap.

Poor thing. Plus, she is plain.

The second girl never shows.

The boy is torn between his mother and the limp.

He yearns for the second girl,

but that’s wasted angst.

Bear with me.

The second girl lives a thousand years ago.

So, no wonder.

She is beautiful but feels incomplete.

The boy wishes on a star.

The girl with the limp contemplates the moon and time.

A thousand years before, the second girl dreams of ecstasy.

The girl with the limp thinks of this

as the boy slips his hand between her legs.

The boy thinks of this as the girl with the limp undoes his pants.

That’s when the mother walks into the room.

That’s when the girl wakes up a thousand years ago.

Everyone is drenched but far from satisfied.

The mother, embarrassed, wanders off to drink.

Roll credits.

 

 


 

 

Time is a Form of Gravity

 

Old men with theatrical grudges,

old wrongs, imagined clues,

lost photographs.

 

There were misplaced apologies

that might have helped.

Old fires with their killing smoke.

The failure of the dance, even that.

 

Good days sinning with young maidens

and clumsy exits, prideful.

 

The room where they met.

The years.

 

Now, brittle bones

and minds fallen into caves.

 

Carnivorous fears,

the loss of what was only wished for.

 

Hands held and dropped,

the selfish theatre of desire

with act five in disarray.

 

Nothing left but the curtain.

No roses, no bows.

 

The audience long since lost.

 

 

 


Quantum Entanglement, Maybe

 

On June 12 1954, a woman of clear spirit

saw your face, just as it is now,

right this moment.

She was eating a ham and Swiss sandwich

on sourdough bread, plenty of mayonnaise,

and drinking a glass of sweet tea

with lemon.

She always had lemon with her tea

to cut through the sugar,

though she required both flavors

for optimum enjoyment.

Your face flashed into her mind

with your eyes looking directly into hers.

It was quite an intense experience

for anyone on June 12 1954,

let alone a woman of clear spirit.

In truth, she almost stopped

eating her sandwich

but it was her only chance for lunch

before heading back to her job

at the bank and she was still hungry.

Five minutes later she had forgotten

your face. She glanced in her mirror

and straitened her blouse.

Back to the salt mines.

 

 

 

Lovers in Love

 

It is love, of course.

It is impossible.

He is he, after all.

She is she.

It is love that plunges the knife.

They would be together

if everyone knew everything,

but no one knows much

and most know nothing.

But it is love.

The mind staggers.

It is the sort of love

that destroys sleep

but feeds dreams.

That sort of thing.

Impossible.

You will see them here

each day

if you watch.

There will be a tip of the hat.

A nod.

 

 

 


My Bag of Sorrows

 

Also, I must tell you

that I am unhappy

with several things.

I do not like

the disappearance of cats

from the world,

an event you might protest

has not happened,

but I assure you

that you have only not noticed.

I detest that I can look

in a person’s eyes

and know the time and manner

of their death.

I’ve won more than my share of bar bets

with this trick,

but haven’t felt especially

good about it, even so.

I weep that my dreams come true

in only sad and trivial ways.

Like my recurring dream

of loud customers

in checkout lines

who are always

twelve cents short of their bill.

It is a mystery where the cats have gone.

It is also a mystery when I will die

and in what manner.

No one sees me the way I see the world.

Now let me look at you,

if you still wish it.

I will tell you many things

about fate and forever.

It will be a story of beautiful regret,

but you will never know

if I am lying.

 

 

 

Thursday, October 12, 2023

GAS Featured Poet: Tom Lagasse


 Tom’s writing has appeared in numerous literary journals, both in print and online, and in anthologies, including Border Beats. He lives in Bristol, CT. 

Social Media:

www.tjlagasse.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tjlagasse

Twitter: @tomlagasse

Instagram: @tom_lagasse 




Salinas


Driving to make my pilgrimage to 

Steinbeck land, I pass the valley.


Wall-to-wall carpet of lettuce, 

Strawberries, and other produce

 

Leads the eye to the hills in the west

And the ocean to the east.  


The summer heat wilts.  In the fields

heavily dressed Mexicans, hoping to


Prevent the sun and pesticides from permeating 

into the core of their precious, porous bodies


Appear like a mirage of moving rocks

as they care for the food that will go 


On my table on the other side of this 

country.  When the clear plastic


Clam shells are pulled from the shelf,  some-

one will mumble a complaint about the cost.    





Efficiency


In a portable cubicle, in an innocuous 

office building not large enough 

to hold humanity’s dreams, someone 

has been tasked to lead a team

to study how to increase operational

efficiencies and improve 

the bottom line.  In effect:

to exchange the beating heart

for a robot or an application.  

Since machines never need

to vacation or sleep, which

senior management sees

ss a plus.  This also will increase 

the speed of products getting to 

market faster, which consumers demand.

They pour over the ratio of capital 

investment to reduce jobs.  The days

of lifetime employment are gone.  

What should any employee expect, 

the team reasons, this is capitalism, 

not people-ism.  It is the natural evolution

of a concept, like the Information Age,

The Industrial Age, or Darwinism 

where the rich fatten the poor

Before they eat them.  




Friday, October 6, 2023

GAS Featured Poet: Andrew Weatherly


Andrew Weatherly lives in Asheville, North Carolina where he hears inspiration from dying trees, Hawaiian shirts, fires, and other poets.  He is blessed to teach kids to think for themselves, dance in the streets, and slip off to pilgrimages to sacred mountains.  

He’s been published in Belle Reve, Axe Factory, Former People, Danse Macabre, Visitant, Cordite, BlazeVox, the Literary Nest, Commonline Journal, and Crack the Spine. Look for more of his poetry upcoming in ClockwiseCat and Delta Poetry.



Galactic Bread Crumbs


He asked, “In what direction do the dead fly off the earth?”

Perhaps it is not they who fly

but stay gently still in space and time

no longer expanding

as earth rotates, spins around the sun

the solar system gaining speed

moving on in the galaxy’s arm

in twirling motion out from some

hypothetical Big Bang center

and the souls left behind

like a trail of crumbs in the forest

planetary refuse remaining

leaving a trail of dead where we have been

but not to return

taking with us only earthly atoms

while their spirits set free

in the void

left behind 

telling tails

 


Quaker Graveyard


simple gray stones 

three inches above ground 

several set at six 

one stone nine inches above the earth: such Pride

tiny rocky islands surrounded by succulent jade grass 

 

Four hundred souls buried here 

so like my living Quaker parents 

marking days in pages read and pondered 

words thoughts feelings of lives 

as simple as ink 

black on a white page

 

As I left home to visit my parents 

I considered how to leave my home 

so the cat wouldn’t tip it over.  Then

truck packed, eight hours to drive—and suddenly

dozens of poetry books flipped, plopped 

off end table, the cat dozed, the phone ringing!?!? 

 

Tonight exhaustion driven  

still blacktop caffeinated 

listening to storm gently roiling 

frogs laugh in koi pond out back 

my headboard: 

hundreds of books stacked on sides 

beside bed full shelves many upright 

plenty angled, sliding away like asphalt    

spilling over floor 

no need for a cat to tip them over

just an aging man and woman 

measuring wealth 

by words on pages of Wordsworth, 

thoughts on the Quaker circulars, 

feelings of Danticat, Churchill, Atwood 

rarely rising more than three inches above another

 



Thursday, September 28, 2023

GAS Featured Poet: Mark McCormick


Mark McCormick is a writer, painter, and yoga instructor living in San Francisco. Professionally, he is retired from a corporate career where he managed large digital design teams. He has a fledgling TikTok channel @markdoespoems. 


I Just Wanted to Say

 

I want to say something about magic

                                                                  But I don’t know what to say

Except once I was reading a poem about a peacock

                                                                  And one landed on my deck.

 

I want to say something about ghosts

                                                                  But I don’t know what to say

Except when I was eighteen I saw one

                                                                  And he was wearing a brown plaid blazer.

 

I want to say something about lust

                                                                  On that I’m an expert.

It made me break the law once or twice

                                                                  And that’s all I’m saying. Wait for the movie.

 

I want to say something about God

                                                                  Only I’m afraid.

But once on the Ganges my boatman’s oar

                                                                  Thudded on a dead body floating.

 

I want to say something about mother

                                                                  But is there anything left to be said

Except once I had a drowsy therapist suggest I should just accept her as she is

                                                                  I rolled my eyes and never went back.

 

I want to say something about whiskey

                                                                  But dad was the authority

There must be fifty ways to hide your liquor

                                                                  I hide mine behind these lines from time to time.

 

I want to say something about truth

                                                                  But I have no idea where to start.

 

I’m 57 now; check back 

                                                                  In 50 years and I’ll try.

 

Before I go I want to say one more thing about 

                                                                  Mothers and God and the spirit and ghosts and death and truth and the Ganges and whiskey and whatnot.

I released a candle on a flower on that river, then your ashes in the heat of the flames by the crematory ghats

                                                                  I cried once and for all. Finally I got you to India. 

I guess that’s what I wanted to say after all.