#4: Self

NOTEs on #4: Self

The art of the self: the self-portrait, memoir, first-person narrative, the selfie. All art, either written or visual, can be seen as either a reflection of, or an expression of, the self, and the theme that grew out of the submissions for this issue, the idea of self as reflection or expression, felt perfectly in tune in the age of the selfie. Heather Sweeney’s three “selfies” from her manuscript, The Book of Likes, directly broach this idea. Jam Kraprayoon’s, “Human Nature,” features graffiti as an expression of the self with lines like, “Halfdan was here. / Kilroy was here. / Ding Jinhao was here.” Radosveta Zhelyazkova’s oil on canvas, “Thinking about…,” is a striking image of the self under the scrutiny of others, and Ian Costello’s “Blue Shift” dioramas compartmentalize a world without self. Laura Lee Washburn’s, “Giving You the Chance to Live: A Divorced Father Explains,” gives us the corrupted internal self-image of a father/creator, while Kansas Poet Laureate Emerita Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, “so ready / to be made over in the dark,” gives the portrait of a corrupted self/creator. In this issue, we explore these various fidelities and infidelities to the self: reflection, expression, the art of seeing the world through one’s self-image.

Greg Stapp

Managing Editor

January 2020

Power Play

When my lover tells me I cannot say no, and I protest, she parts my legs, says yes, baby. Yes. I do what I’m told. No becomes a foreign country. I take it as permission. Open season. So when the waiter asks if there’ll be anything else, I peruse his menu. I’m stuffed, but I say yes, cram my mouth with macaroons and chocolate. And when the Lyft driver seduces me in the rear-view, eyes me like prey, asks, May I kiss you? I say yes. And when the long-legged woman I’ve long lusted after at the gym wonders aloud if I’m single, asks me to dinner and a movie, I say yes. And when she invites me into her bed, what can I say but yes, yes, yes? And when my fan in Nova Scotia begs me to be his muse, to sanction an explicit ode to my breasts, my ankles, my lower lip, a poem he’d never show his wife, I cannot say no to his lust and delusion. Now he wants to climb me, sublime me, shoot me full of stars. Is this what you want, too? he writes, and I answer yes. And when I return to my lover at last and she sinks into the heady dampness between my thighs, looks up at me and asks, Have you been faithful? I say, Yes.

Alexis Rhone Fancher

Giving You the Chance to Live:

Divorced Father Explains

We didn’t like each other much,

but we could fuck twice a night.

Your mother will tell you she loved

me, but she spit on my socks

and cut tiny slices in the lining

of my new suitcase.  When she got shrill,

I thought, this child will owe us.

We are giving her a world, humid

and stuffed with life: jackrabbits,

prairie dogs, jumping spiders, manatee,

biting ants, hissing roaches, pumpernickel.

Nothing is as easy enough not to love

as your mother, your parents, the ache

of an irregular heart.  So I left you

to grow into the world I created.

Laura Lee Washburn

I-70 to St. Louis

Dirty cocksucker, Dad groaned alongside the backing tenor vocals of his car horn. My brother and I knew dirty cocksucker was bad. That exact combination of words, dirty, cock, sucker, drew the attention of the universe to our car like beaming spotlights on escaped convicts. We were a neon blip on the radar of the All-Knowing. Dalton and I silently snickered, waiting for more. Mom rested her head against her window’s cool glass, a blonde mannequin, hair speckled with the gray my brother and I never dared mention. Dad waved his middle finger around with each pump of the brakes.

Car after cocksucker car we passed. Drivers offered a slew of obscene gestures that Dad gladly returned. Toyotas painted in cocksucker greens and blacks cut Dad off; cocksucker semis inched along in the fast lane. Mom glared back at us, shaking her head, and finally laughed. And then, as all our laughter permeated the car, Dad chuckled too. We were now a vague, hazy cocksucker blip disappearing over the cocksucker horizon of the dirty cocksucker highway.

Cody Shrum

What Happens in the Dark

The bottom of your foot on the top 

of mine, too tired to, but too awake not to, 

and so I push down my toes, 

you push up, and we turn

away from our separateness

where later, I will dream of a letter, 

typed but turning into a website 

if I stare at it too long 

from Jerry, not dead a month.

“You didn't fail me,” he's written. 

I read the words over and again

trying to convince myself I didn't

when we both know how I hardened 

my heart, dark with resentment, 

its eyes closed to touch or forgiveness, 

afraid of the vibrant tree of night. 

Now, another night so cold and close 

to his death, you cup my shoulder 

with your listening palm. 

I curve around you, the old impulse 

to do this not just habit or the usual yearning 

to soften death but something we need 

for the sake of time marking itself 

in our motions even if we sought

to suspend time. We pump and breathe, 

lean in and out at once, the old stars we know

hardly visible through the window, 

the ones we don't know rising or setting, 

smoothed away by the coming daylight.

We could close our eyes, but it doesn't matter

when the heart is so broken, so ready

to be made over in the dark.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

#

In this selfie we reenact a scene from Road House

& I am not charmed by you 

I wear a crop top & walk into the ocean

I am learning to cry in the ocean 

I am learning to kick with all my heart

#

In this selfie I wear your sweatpants & start my period

I am a glacier of mist and heavy metal

You protest as I pose with your favorite saint 

You hand me a dirty towel you hand me some chicken wings

In this selfie we are at an Applebee’s in Michigan

& you are so embarrassed 

#

In this selfie I am bad about the trees

I throw a wrench into the sky

So don’t call me fancy

I am not your family camping trip

Your bonfire cocktail

Your girlhood on ice

Your outpouring of need

Heather Sweeney

More

For better health, longevity—chew more.

Self-disgust from one binge leads to two more.

The moms gossip in groups. Hair, tennis club,

trips. I tried, failed to please them. Can’t woo more.

Republican plan—drill, redistribute,

lie. The many get less, the few, more.

Though I teach, No sexist stereotypes,

my daughter claims, Boys talk about poo more.

One twin loves hot colors—crimson lips, skirts

bright as desire. The other likes blue more.

Poetry couldn’t save Sexton or Plath.

Talent makes jewels from pain, it can’t do more.

Thou shalt, thou shalt not. Religion’s endless

scold. The Catholic lives with guilt. The Jew, more.

Silver-tinged light. Wind from fluttering wings.

Which angel hovers behind me? Doom or

redemption? In middle school, words are swords.

Girls rise or are cut down by rumor.

Sticky newlyweds. I love you most, he

insists. No, she counters. I love you more.

Call me doctor, couples therapist, sage.

My wisest advice—argue less, screw more.

Alison Stone

Jailbird

A pebble bathing at the heap's foot.

Day, burped from riot:

the newspaper layer,

a hand on the glass, 

the fingernail layer 

and the none-too-small-to-save. 

The clouds here are bottom-heavy. 

Your own white face floats back to you. 

Some rooms you don't re-enter. 

Some mimes you used to live with, wave.

Alec Hershman

small bones

i find the edges of grief

in the small bones

of a desiccated brushtail

marsupine and

heavy

she's sun-warmed and ant-picked

the body an island

of rot, borders creeping

an imprint

unmapped

the white tips of exposed ribs

anchor slipping skin like

an unfolding pattern, continues

her gentle

decay

Lenora Cole

Black robe corner of my eye 

Black robe corner of my eye 

rose an eagle tall wings gusting though 

there was no breeze to be felt. No, 

he didn’t tawk American. 

Turquoise skirt above knees revealed 

toes in white dirtied sandals same-hued 

knit top clinging peeling painted belt. 

No, I am not Greek. 

Sitting on those marble stairs searching 

for a red hard-packed cigarette that he 

might offer feeling open blue babbling. 

Yes, I kiss, too. 

In sun with self at my side an orthodox 

version of Mary incense clouds forming 

about her crowned and calendared head. 

No, I am not holy. 

Ran to get the girl who ran in just enough 

breath to touch his living hand bowed 

to the truth and beauty of his robe in the 

wind. Holiness. No. 

Yes. 

AKaiser

Human Nature 

It’s said, “the past is a foreign country; 

they do things differently there” 

but the hand and heart has left their mark 

on every page and wall from here 

to Palmyra. 

In a bathroom stall, someone penned 

a joke about my mother’s weight 

and next to a ruined gate, a Roman wrote 

that she tried to pass through and failed. 

Back in school, I used to doodle 

on desks and canteen tables, 

these dinosaurs and little triangles. 

In Novgorod, a boy carved out, 

in soft birch bark, 

all his alphabets and silly beasts 

and underneath the Pompeii ash, it’s etched 

that Rufus loves Cornelia and that 

once you are dead, you are nothing. 

Between conquests and collapse 

are the beats of our leper-hearts, 

the whispered fear of being forgotten. 

Halfdan was here. 

Kilroy was here. 

Ding Jinhao was here. 

Graffiti, like poetry, makes nothing happen: 

it survives and reminds us that 

though the past is a foreign country; 

it's still just people there. 

Jam Kraprayoon