Providence, RI
Existential Field Notes: Diner
If secrets are transmitted here
no neon will say, just the same
on-unless-it’s-off messages of
abundance. Bottomless coffee,
sure, and five pages of menu —
By DIPIKA MUKHERJEE
Reviewed by LYNNE MCENIRY
“Tell me the landscape in which you live and I will tell you who you are,” suggests philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. Based on her collection Dialect of Distant Harbors, Dipika Mukherjee would agree, I believe, but “landscapes” here would have to be plural, because in addition to geographical landscapes, these poems embrace multiple settings, languages, weather, generations, relationships, and traditions and rituals, both spiritual and secular. Through experiences both lived and dreamed, her poems invite the reader to discover beauty, danger, and heartbreak by exploring new worlds and revealing heart-stopping moments of intimacy. The harbors she describes are distant but never forgotten, both welcoming and estranging.
Although they are not named or numbered, we can see by the choice of extra spacing between each group of five to seven poems in the table of contents that Mukherjee has created seven sections for this collection. Throughout the book, each section is separated by a graceful lotus mandala, similar to those that adorn sacred texts and women’s hands hennaed for special occasions. These seven symbolic pauses serve as a constant reminder of the overarching message of healing, resilience, and rebirth in all the poems carefully gathered here. They also invite the reader to pay special attention to seven central themes: generational roots, the misogyny and physical torture women suffer, the passing of time, the horrific violence of racial and cultural hate, mortality, migration and exile, and the value of travel.
Please welcome new contributor ESTEBAN RODRÍGUEZ.
In LOTERÍA—which draws its form from the Mexican game of chance yet manages to convey a sense of inevitability with every line—Esteban Rodríguez presents intimate and compassionate portraits of family members. Among the most vivid are those of his father, whose crossing of the desert is imagined in kaleidoscopic, multivalent sequences both harrowing and hallucinatory, and his mother, whose high spirits and physical sufferings are vividly reconstructed and turned for moving insights. Deeply companionable, offered in a voice that is simultaneously energetic and guided by confident restraint, these poems are full of love and clarity, an uncommon and welcome combination.
—John Hennessy, Poetry Editor
New poems by R. ZAMORA LINMARK, KEVIN CRAFT, and COLE W. WILLIAMS
Table of Contents:
—R. Zamora Linmark, “Under the Influence”
—Kevin Craft, “Basin and Range” and “Or Later We Become Our Parents”
—Cole W. Williams “Gombe”
Under the Influence
By R. Zamora Linmark
After watering the baby navel orange tree
rosemary and sage I left the garden before
the rain returned and sped to Ala Moana mall
after my brother told me nothing beats retail
shopping under the influence of grief
especially when everything from Spring must go
so wail flail your arms wildly like a child drowning
stomp in your black leather sandals for Gethsemane
but for Pete’s sake please pedicure first
you want your sorrow to be of first rate honey
equated with Achilles and not Manchego cheese-
like heels then hit Zara and buy that slim-fitted
charcoal-gray pants with matching coat
you’ve been dreaming of that varsity jock
letterman jacket with green sleeves and decal
in Greek one size smaller if available
a perfect motivator to wake up very early
in the morning load the Biki bike with your inflatable
board and oars and balancing between choppy
waters and gusty winds paddle from one end
of the beach to the next just a little after sunrise.
New poems by TIMOTHY DONNELLY, JANUARY GILL O’NEIL, and NGUYEN BINH
Table of Contents:
—Timothy Donnelly, “Eglantine” and “Mill”
—January Gill O’Neil, “Us”
—Nguyen Binh, “Two of the Graves by the Highway” and “Uncle”
Eglantine
By Timothy Donnelly
after Marceline Desbordes-Valmore
Thorn-blossom! Tender thing, prone to solitude
like yours truly, don’t get it twisted if I reach out my hand—
it isn’t to pluck you, who are my beacon down this path, but a gesture
of acknowledgment common among my kind.
By MYRONN HARDY
I’m afraid of your elation.
The way you arrive masked.
The way the mask is removed
By FELICE BELLE
these biddies with their deadbolt backs/ take naps
while i construct/ canvas from corset cast
art does not wait until you are well
what they did not understand—the training was classical
By JOHN BLAIR
We cherish ourselves even to the bones
which like some mother’s rigid hangers
hold us to our lacquered shapes in the smug
dialetheia of am and briefly was until
we come to our raveled ends everyone
just taking up space until space takes us back
one washed-out moment at a time like tea
leaves steeping in a cup until we’re ready
for someone to bow in close and take
a quick ceremonial sip then turn the cup
wipe clean the rim and hand it carefully
to yet another honored guest who mindful
of what we might let go to waste will not
leave until every drop is drunk.
Thomas Aquinas prescribed fervent prayer,
and I do pray, but, oddly, a bird has been
my best medicine when I find myself shrunken
and absent, as I do each year as the anniversary
of my son’s death approaches. And so I turn again
to this: a dipper I watched in Zion’s Virgin River.
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