April brings new poems by our contributors: SHARON DOLIN, KERRY JAMES EVANS, ANDREW HUDGINS, AND MARIA TERRONE!
Sharon Dolin, Kerry James Evans, Andrew Hudgins, Maria Terrone (from left to right)
Table of Contents:
—Sharon Dolin, “Savor”
—Kerry James Evans, “Smoky”
—Andrew Hudgins, “After Death”
—Maria Terrone, “Alchemy”
Savor
By: Sharon Dolin
lives inside of savior—
acquired a salty tail and a minty herb
with savory. Latin for taste, along the way
it picked up prolonged joy—
as I have for these Blue Plumbago flowers
whose vines sprawl up walls I slow
down for on my shady stroll
into town along a narrow lane above
the port to buy pignoli crescents filled
with marzipan—sweetness compressed
to a smile. The older I become, the more
I’m a savorer of the bitter and the sweet:
let each taste open and linger
inside me—redolent of now.
Smoky
By: Kerry James Evans
Momma’s in the mountains spending money she doesn’t have,
and she’s wondering why I can’t get away from work,
drive up and race go-karts, and sure, who doesn’t want
to race go-karts all day, then scream the afternoon away,
buckled into a roller coaster hanging off the side of a cliff,
while a family of black bears look up from below,
and sure, it’s only a glimpse, because, let’s face it,
we’re out of our minds and flying high. There goes
momma’s flip flop and here comes the last turn
into a tunnel, where we roll to a stop, then we’re off
to Cherokee, where we climb a mountain to stare down
at fall’s bright goodbye. And we know why we’re here,
don’t we? Momma leans against the railing, says, I sure wish
Daddy was here to see this, then we vanish into a cloud.
After Death
By: Andrew Hudgins
two housepainters talking while they work
What you want done with your corpse when you die?
Don’t care.
Really? Gwen’s all about cremation.
Yeah?
Her daddy’s on her mama’s mantel.
He still light up when Lawrence Welk comes on?
How’d you know he loved that shitty music?
You told me.
Huh. Your corpse?
Don’t know, don’t care.
You’ve never thought about it?
No, not much.
Not really. Joy once asked me what I’d want,
and I said “You can double-bag my ass
and set me on the curb.” She wasn’t happy.
I’m really staunch in not giving a shit.
Gwen’s folks got them a family plot, with slots
for all of us, and, brother, they got pissed
she settled on incineration. Something
about the resurrection of the body.
That’s something else I never think about.
Me neither. Not really. It seems to me
if God can bring dead Christians back to life,
rounding up the pieces should be easy.
Why’re you going on about this stuff?
Preacher was preaching on it yesterday.
And what about after that? You think your soul
lives on.
Seems like it should, but I don’t know.
Preachers are always sure that it’s up or down
heaven or hell. And hell, they could be right
or death could just be like light switched off
and there’s no soul to be set free, judged,
and sent to heaven, hell, or Tuscaloosa.
Some preachers, I’ve heard, don’t believe in hell.
Uh, who said that?
Another preacher.
Could be.
I don’t really think about it much. Probably will
when I’m your age.
Yeah, probably you will.
You ever seen somebody killed?
Not me,
but Daddy did, when he was just sixteen.
Daddy’d say, I shouldn’t tell you this,
and then he’d tell me something horrible.
He was patching potholes on a highway crew.
Hot sun, hot cars, hot asphalt, hot exhaust
and men were always passing out, he said.
An RV smacked a flagger right beside him–
just blowed her up, he said. How about you?
Katie’s overdosed three times so far.
It’d probably be twice that except for prison.
I found her puking on the bathroom floor
and mumbling alike a crazy person. I pulled her
out into the hall, cleared her throat
of foam and froth and fucking Lucky Charms
and called the ambulance. I held her head
while she was gurgling and cramping up.
and begged her not to fucking die on me.
Then she went limp. I thought of CPR
and couldn’t for the life of me call up,
was I supposed to pinch her nose or not
and then the EMTs burst in and saved her.
Oh Jesus, Lucky Charms?
Yeah, funny huh?
I guess. But mostly grim and pitiful.
She’s OD’d twice since then that I know of.
God knows how many times I don’t know of.
Maybe prison’s helping her that way.
It might be harder to OD in there.
Not as hard as you would fucking hope.
That’s why you’re thinking funerals and such?
Yeah, sure. But also me.
Not Gwen?
God no.
I’m starting to feel old, but Gwen’s robust.
She’ll likely outlive me by twenty years.
I do not want to think about it but
I think I got to.
What does Katie want?
We talk about my death and Gwen’s, but Katie’s,
me and Gwen just sneak up on that subject,
sneak up and stop. So let’s get back to you.
I’m going to do whatever Joy decides.
And I’m content with what Gwen wants to do
and Katie will be too, it comes to that.
I was crying Jesus as the walls came down.
What? Is that a weirdo hymn or something
your preacher said?
I wish. Those are the words
that I was singing in my dream last night.
Alchemy
By: Maria Terrone
|
It was always about money. But also about the hunt—gold in them thar hills but also close as our city streets. My mother haggled with amateur and professional dealers, at St. Vincent de Paul’s thrift shop, at weekend flea markets, wares strewn on card tables and blankets. Closing eyeing the beaten, the unwanted, she bargained hard until she got the price down to some ridiculous, paltry sum. The object of desire could be jewelry or a cloudy plastic bag filled with old pens, a few that turned out to be 14K—Eureka, thanks to her test kit.
As a child, I’d watch her scratch such metal castoffs across the seemingly magical stone, after applying a few drops of a mysterious chemical from a dropper— anticipation building as we watched the marks turn a different color, often the right color, pay dirt, that junk the real thing. Rings, pins, pendants, bracelets, earrings, their worth revealed despite appearances—dull, dirty, sometimes battered. No matter.
Half blind from youth, she had an eye for buried treasure, some treasure kept, some resold back to dealers or ordinary people who disliked TV shopping. She kept more than she could wear in a lifetime, in boxes, drawers, and high, spindly cabinets reserved for her finds. Now in her 101st year, she hasn’t stopped instructing me: “When I’m gone, do not sell this black pearl for less than X,” she says emphatically, naming the price. “It’s very rare.”
My heart drops as if her own lucky alchemy was working in reverse, transforming me to a state of depletion. I picture my veins frozen, gold striations in a chunk of marble. Yet how can I speak this, surrounded by an inheritance of talismanic jewelry that embodies the divine? |
Sharon Dolin is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Imperfect Present and Manual for Living; a memoir entitled Hitchcock Blonde; and two books of translation, most recently Late to the House of Words: Selected Poems by Gemma, winner of Saturnalia Books Malinda A. Markham Translation Prize and finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Dolin is Associate Editor of Barrow Street Press and teaches poetry workshops in New York City. https://sharondolin.com
Kerry James Evans is an associate professor of English at Georgia College and State University, where he coordinates the MFA and undergraduate creative writing programs. He is the author of Nine Persimmons(The Backwaters/University of Nebraska) and Bangalore (Copper Canyon). He received a PhD in English from Florida State University, an MFA in creative writing from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, and his BA in English from Missouri State University. A recipient of a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, his poems have appeared in AGNI, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. He is the coeditor and managing editor of Peach.
Andrew Hudgins is the author of seven books of poems, including SAINTS AND STRANGERS, THE GLASS HAMMER, and ECSTATIC IN THE POISON. A finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, he is a recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships as well as the Harper Lee Award. He is retired from teaching in the Department of English at Ohio State University and lives in rural Tennessee.
Maria Terrone‘s poetry collections are No Known Coordinates (April 2025, The Word Works); Eye to Eye(Bordighera Press); A Secret Room in Fall (McGovern Prize, Ashland Poetry Press), The Bodies We Were Loaned, and two chapbooks. Her work, published in French and Farsi, has appeared in media including Poetry, Ploughshares and Poetry Daily and in more than 30 anthologies from publishers including Knopf and Beacon Press. She is also the author of an essay collection, At Home in the New World, and is poetry editor of the scholarly and creative journal Italian Americana. She lives in Jackson Heights, Queens, one of the most diverse communities in America. mariaterrone.com
