Category: Poetry

Two Poems

Halloween: Ends

Michael Myers at the 711 filling up his SUV.
Michael Myers at Home Depot buying fancy drill bits he doesn’t really need.
Michael Myers sitting in the back of the room at the PTA meeting, scrolling through Tinder.
Michael Myers doing taxes.
Michael Myers scrolling through Facebook in the movie theater.
Michael Myers at couple’s counseling.
Michael Myers letting the dog out one night and telling the kids it ran away.
Michael Myers killing all the sex workers in Grand Theft Auto.
Michael Myers sitting in the back pew at church, scrolling through Tinder.
Michael Myers mowing the lawn on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
Michael Myers wearing an apron that says I Rub My Own Meat.
Michael Myers getting drunk at his Superbowl party.
Michael Myers explaining the differences between a bratwurst and a sausage to a woman looking at her phone.
Michael Myers renting Saw IV again on Amazon Prime.
Michael Myers taking his mask off to have sex but leaving his socks on.
Michael Myers toweling off in the locker room.
Michael Myers rubbing against people on the train.
Michael Myers at the hotel bar explaining the difference between bourbon and whisky to a woman looking at her phone.
Michael Myers calling up toiletries and answering the door in his bathrobe each time.
Michael Myers ordering his burger well-done.
Michael Myers sending his food back twice.
Michael Myers not tipping.

 

Another autumn

                        after Mikey Swanberg

 

walking the mile
to work,

 

freezing in the morning,
sweating on the way back,

 

each step a stitch
quilting the heavy blanket

 

of our unhappiness.
Nothing has happened,

 

and still—

 

I imagined my lover

might show up

 

in my office
before I left,

 

shut the door
and we would fuck

 

quietly on the desk

 

to the rhythm

of the copy machine.

 

In another version,
he’d walk out to me

 

halfway along the mile,

stitching his own path,

 

and say something
he was never going to say,

 

that he had changed, and I
had changed, but

 

all for the better,
and we were stronger for it,

 

as though love
were a sourdough,

 

dying then restarting,
grown through being given away.

 

How long did I believe that time
was the most costly thing.

 

What a hard bargain
to find it is the only thing.

 

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west country

the bad thing is too big to look at. the bad thing is heavy. when i kick the bad thing, its side caves in like an old football. i put the bad thing in my backpack. i walk with the bad thing to the train stop. the bad thing and i buy a pasty from warrens. i throw the wrapper away, but i can’t throw the bad thing away. at church the bad thing lights candles. at home the bad thing holds my hand. when i talk to the bad thing, the bad thing talks back sometimes. when i read to the bad thing, the bad thing listens. the bad thing likes television. the bad thing likes location, location, location. the bad thing says it might go away if i took it on a country walk, but the bad thing is lying. the bad thing sings to itself, very softly, under its breath. the bad thing wants me to listen. i don’t want to listen to the bad thing. i want to leave the bad thing alone, by itself, in an empty room. the bad thing likes this room. the bad thing helps me close the door, so that we are in this room together.

 

 

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Rain

Correlation is not causation, but few things correlate more to a mood than rain.

 

Do people still come down with “a case of the vapors”?

 

What is weather if not causality in a landscape?

 

When it rains it pours. How does the Morton Salt Girl maintain her kicky attitude, happy under that umbrella and never bored with life?

 

Half the idiots in charge of this country don’t even know enough to come in out of the rain.

 

The Great Plains are basically a desert and thus Nebraska is a fairly dry state. In Lincoln, my Grandpa Boo was obsessed with his rain gauge, and therefore I, too, obsessed became.

 

Raining cats and dogs may come from the Greek cata doxa, “contrary to experience or belief.” I can’t believe how hard it’s raining!

 

Swipe a fingertip heart in the misty windowpane.

 

I hate to be the one to say it, but your parade’s going to get rained on.

 

Never have I ever been so depressed as when I lived for one year in the Pacific Northwest. It literally always rains and people metaphorically are always taking rainchecks. The Seattle No, I later learned it was termed, aka the Seattle Freeze.

 

A rain of arrows. Soot and ash raining down. What is life but a rain of blows?

 

This is the third year in a row that the rains have failed.

 

A peer-reviewed study found that of all 50 states, Washington ranked 48th for the trait of extraversion.

 

Gentle rain on the roof is as pleasing as alliteration, day or night, right as rain.

 

Does rain like being the external correlative of sorrow? Of pain? That feeling of tears going into your ears when you’re lying on your back and crying.

 

When you listen to “Famous Blue Raincoat,” what shade of blue do you see?

 

At this point it’d take a meteor shower to get the earth really clean.

 

Droplets stitch the day with gray silken threads. Come rain or shine, the hits just keep coming.

 

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Call and Response

It is a hinge.

It is a flash splintering

the sky,

then a rumble.

Under ripe light,

it is pollen

furring the bees.

It is a wood thrush’s

song rising

from the backyard’s

green pulpit.

Over and over

one calls, insistent.

Then another

parses, flute-like

as the head

bobs. Tail flicks.

It is the link

embedded in us.

Think of

the old gospels

which require

a beating heart,

church hands

to answer.

No matter what

form it takes

it seems impossible

to disentangle.

And still the God-weld

split, despite my bows

and prayers

to save my son.

You were silent.

 

 

This poem originally appeared in our 46.2 issue, and was a runner-up for The Florida Review‘s 2022 Humboldt Poetry Prize.

Prize judge David Keplinger’s citation: “In this delicately achieved lyric, like the prayer it references, rife with “pollen/furring the bees,” and the “backyard’s/green pulpit,” the natural world is imbued with sacred qualities, though the speaker’s calls to save the unnamed son are not answered. Nevertheless, the poem honors the tangled music of this realm, offering the song of the wood-thrush, “flute-like,” as embodiment of this grief.”

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Sunset

After Jim Harrison

 

On this excursion my hands were folded,

I tried not to see anything, didn’t pick up the pole,

let him do all the work, he took every turn

for the both of us—promising I would be amazed

at any moment, soon enough, and I fucking doubt it

I replied, wanting something more from my time,

as though each of my moments were precious

and meant to be filled with golden sap, we,

through mangrove canals where pregnant

wolf spiders ran their fingers through my hair,

and blackened crabs climbed from root to root,

the water moved past our boat like soft hands

swimming in still water, paddled toward the sunset

when two boar, nose-to-tail, took to the water to cross

from shore to shore oblivious of us one way or another

and now is a good time to define what our time is worth.

 

 

This poem originally appeared in our 46.2 issue, and was a runner-up for The Florida Review‘s 2022 Humboldt Poetry Prize.

Prize judge David Keplinger’s citation: “On a miserable excursion through mangrove canals, rife with crabs and spiders, what seems a resistant young person sits with hands folded as an older figure tries to amaze and awaken them; and they do; they do awaken to the worth of this moment with its boars crossing the shore “oblivious of us” in that instant of marvelous connection with the natural world.”

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Two Poems

Witness Statement

And, behold, in the year
of unencumbered plague

 

those who trafficked in wickedness
did so on palatial golf courses.

 

An orphan cried for succor
and received spit.

 

Nothing of this was new
or profound, only more naked.

 

And, lo, I fed my son a breakfast
bar on a dying planet.

 

And on a dying planet
the wicked watered

 

my son’s playground with poisons.
They hallowed his oceans with lead.

 

Tell me what should I have done
but bathe bread in peanut butter

 

mince Flintstones in a cup of cola.
And, lo, the wicked thought only

 

of my boy as a horsetail dreams
of flies. His chest rose and fell

 

as we both tacked the garbage
truck rumbling its track.

 

In this was no sin.
In this was only another

 

form of hunger: the truckness
of the truck begetting wonder

 

begetting want. Oh, felt my boy
with every rattling atom.

 

And the wicked kenneled
a brown boy so like my son.

 

I said, I am sickened.
I said, I will maim you

 

with my claws before you
take their boy, my boy whose laugh

 

turns this truck ripe with refuse
to some radiant blessing.

 

Anubis at the DMV

Let me be blunt:

            fate is no whim.

 

It is the voice of

            a thousand bureaucrats intoning

                        now serving 554.

 

If diligence is a knife

            you are our bread.

 

if service is a repeating decimal

            a herd of digits flashed to life

                        you’re dead last.

            Ultimo.

                        The sarcophagal cero.

 

Each attendant is a monolith

                        in a desert you wander

                                    an hour, a lifetime.

 

Who can know?

            The intervals grow

                        immeasurable.

 

Think of a cat

            toying mindlessly with a string

                        an entire day

            bored

                        somnambular.

 

Past the grave

            vice or virtue is simply

                        the dust we brush off.

 

Let it accumulate.

            Let the carpet fiber

                        crack beneath your feet

 

Now you want to know

            how much longer

                        a day, a year, a league.

 

Like all dictators

            I simply push the beads

                        across, then back.

 

Who am I

            to enumerate

                        your wait time?

 

Who to tell you

            how to spend your death?

 

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Announcing the 2022 Humboldt Prize Winner & Runners-Up

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The Florida Review is pleased to announce the winner and runners-up for the third annual Humboldt Poetry Prize. The Prize, which is funded by an anonymous donor in honor of Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), recognizes the best poems with an environmental focus published in the previous year in The Florida Review and on Aquifer: The Florida Review Online. The winner receives an award of $500, and each runner-up $250.

Alexander von Humboldt as painted by Friedrich Georg Weitsch, c. 1860.

This year’s winner and runners-up are:

  • Winner: Zoë Fay-Stindt for “Fall in Languedoc” (Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, March 2022)
  • Runner-Up: Madelyn Garner for “Call and Response” (TFR 46.2, Fall 2022)
  • Runner-Up: Cole W. Williams for “Sunset” (TFR 46.2, Fall 2022)
  • Honorable Mention: Zoë Fay-Stindt for “A Robin at the Bus Station” (Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, March 2022)

The winner and honorable mention will be reprinted in The Florida Review 47.1, Spring/Summer 2023; both runners-up will be republished on Aquifer: The Florida Review online this spring. David Keplinger served as the final judge for this year’s Prize. Continue reading “Announcing the 2022 Humboldt Prize Winner & Runners-Up” →

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Did You Miss Your Saturn Return

There is a spectrum of brightness. You might not have realized
that gleam is stronger than glimmer. The latter suggests movement,
like when sunlight hits an unstill surface and we call it dancing.
Similarly, I know water isn’t blue, it just reflects the colors
around it. And I know it isn’t solid—it just invites being touched.
Yes, I’m talking about hope again, and you are in your bed all day.
I’m googling the concept of a Saturn return because, thematically,
I like the idea of reaching an age where it’s acceptable to change
my mind. You don’t believe in astrology. I’m not sure you believe
in anything, and I worry you missed the chance to see it all fresh.
I’m worried it’s easier to try to fix your problems instead
of sitting and feeling mine. I’m not a good swimmer because
I struggle to breathe through my panic. I struggle to let my chest
loosen when I walk down the street. My chest, surely it was tight
any time you touched me and we pretended water was solid, blue.

 

 

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Welcoming Our New Poetry and Fiction Editors!

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We are thrilled to welcome to our new Poetry and Fiction Editors! Read more about them and their work below.

Rochelle Hurt (Poetry Editor) is a poet and essayist. She is the author of three poetry collections: The J Girls: A Reality Show (Indiana University Press, 2022), which won the Blue Light Books Prize from Indiana Review; In Which I Play the Runaway (Barrow Street, 2016), which won the Barrow Street Poetry Prize; and The Rusted City: A Novel in Poems (White Pine, 2014). Her work has been included in Poetry magazine and the Best New Poets anthology. She’s been awarded prizes and fellowships from Arts & Letters, Poetry International, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. Originally from the Ohio Rust Belt, Hurt now lives in Orlando and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Central Florida.

Brandon Amico (Poetry Editor) is the author of a collection of poetry, Disappearing, Inc (Gold Wake Press, 2019), and the recipient of a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. His poetry can be found in journals and anthologies including The Best American Poetry 2020, The Adroit Journal, Blackbird, Booth, Copper Nickel, The Cincinnati Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hunger Mountain, Kenyon Review, New Ohio Review, New South, Slice, and Waxwing.

Blake Sanz (Fiction Editor) is the author of The Boundaries of Their Dwelling, a collection of short stories that won the 2021 Iowa Short Fiction Award. His short fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, Joyland, Ecotone, Puerto del Sol, and other literary magazines. He and his writing have been featured in Poets & Writers, Electric Literature, and other national forums. Originally from Louisiana, he teaches fiction at the University of Central Florida.

Submissions to our 2023 Editor’s Prizes in Fiction, Poetry, and Creative Nonfiction are now open! The winner in each genre will receive $1,000 and publication in the Review. All entries are considered for publication, and all entrants receive a complimentary one-year subscription to the journal, as well as the option to purchase an additional discounted subscription. We thank you for your support of The Florida Review, and look forward to reading your work.

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Accidental Selfie in the Photo of a Window Quote

West Hollywood, 2019

Who should I look to be when AIDS took a generation of leaders & artists & mentors & thinkers & lovers from me…

 

But the photo is a ghost: reflected boy who takes the picture, boy becoming thread. Boy sick again, undiagnosed, to whom these words will ring divine. Paint to pane, this sigil for departed, lives held in the glare against this glass. The photo is a ghost: boy not a boy but body double with rejection. Somehow, living then; a wasting king left wanting for long curls and smoother cheeks. The blue dress that will save boy still years off. Boy then is short hair and a loose black tee, scruffed face behind the camera. Above, branches off the sidewalk trees part and drop down midday light. Sun-skinned here, boy gospels with a generation. And that night, perched upon a tub’s ledge soaking feet and tonguing cankers, legions call again. Will wash boy’s wounds with sweetened salves, will offer up salvation through new life. Today that boy is gone but isn’t to be mourned. The sun still knows this spirit, how bright to light her walk below the trees.

 

*This poem appears in The Florida Review 46.2, Winter 2022.

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