FIRST LITERARY REVIEW-EAST

MAY 2012

Dear Readers: In trying to figure out the main goal of First Literary Review-East, Karen and I have come to the conclusion that our overriding aesthetic is diversity, both in form and content. To that end, we have managed to come up with an issue that combines sex, drugs, religion, food, art, humor and, of course, Mother's Day! (How's that for a little bit of everything?) Mostly, though, we hope you enjoy all the fine poetry presented here!!     -Cindy Hochman, Editor-in-Chief

****************************************************************************************

Meditation Palindrome

Mood is all as I do Om.

Tea as Antidiuretic Palindrome

Oolong? no loo.

                                                        -Fred Yannantuono

Fired from Hallmark for writing meaningful greeting-card verse, Fred Yannantuono once ran twenty straight balls at pool; won a yodeling contest in a German restaurant; was bitten by a guard dog in a tattoo parlor. His book, A BOILERMAKER FOR THE LADY (ww.nyqbooks.org/fredyannantuono) has been banned in France, Latvia, and the Orkney Isles. Work was nominated for Pushcart prize in 2006. He is the featured poet in the current issue of Light Quarterly. His book TO IDI AMIN I'M A IDIOT-AND OTHER PALINDROMES is due out later this year.

George H. Northrup is President (2006- ) of the Fresh Meadows Poets in Queens, NY, a Board member of the Society that selects the Nassau County Poet Laureate, and former President of the New York State Psychological Association.

Soi Nana

Long ago, you chose a sexually scented
path of solitude
Forsook domesticity for a multitude
Jungles, exotic cities became temporal homes
Seeker, slinger, traversing the globe
You have clung to nothing, including illusions
                                                                                     -Ilka Scobie

Ilka Scobie is a native New Yorker who teaches poetry in the public school system. Her poetry appears in LiveMag, Vanitas, and Poetry in Performance, and her art criticism is published in Artnet and ArtCritical. She collaborates with her husband, photographer Luigi Cazzaniga, for Italian Marie Claire.

Jerome Brooke was born in Evansville, Indiana. He attended Indiana University - MLS, JD. He now lives in the Kingdom of Siam . He is married to Jiraporn Sutta, a princess of the lost Kingdom of Nan . He is the father of two children. His daughter, Jirachaya, is five. She has been crowned as Miss Superstar 2011. His son Justin, 40, is a sales executive in Shanghai He is a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of Indiana. He served as City Attorney, for Ellettsville, Indiana . He also served as Judge Pro Tempore for the Superior Court of Monroe County. He has written City of the Mirage (Amazon) and many other books. His work has recently been published or accepted by a number of journals, including World of Myth - Welcome to Wherever - Danse Macabre - Candidum - MelBrake Press blog - First Literary Review - Bewildering Stories - and Pink Mouse.

****************************************************************************************

Flustered

Trip-switch. Diptych. Noose with a persistent pulse and
a knot to trot. If flustered. Twice blistered. Medical leave
and a cheetah's itch for rich reward. Concatenation.
Articulation. A crumb and a numb finger's figure-it-out.
About-face and a fear resting easy. The teary permissions-
proud portrait of an ornery tortoise. A thwart in the
throat, remote. "Abort," said the legal beagle.
                                                                                    -Mitch Corber

Mitch Corber has recited his musical poetry throughout the City. Corber's work has appeared in Blackbox Manifold, Columbia Poetry Review, Blazevox, Listenlight, Polarity, and others. He founded the Thin Air Video Poetry DVD Archives, which includes Ginsberg, Corso, Ashbery, Di Prima, and Cage, as well as dozens of contemporary NYC poets. Awardee of the New York Foundation for the Arts, and director-camera of NYC's Poetry Thin Air Cable Show.

A Postcard for My Mother
                  A Brivele fur Maman

Mom, this summer in Kyoto,
I bought you a postcard-

I wanted to tell you how beautiful the gingko trees were there
The way the streams rushed down mountains,
A discovery of honeysuckle in the midst of a bamboo forest.
The Shimogamo Shrine

I wanted to tell you everything about Jonathan's wedding

The exact color of the green silk
Worn by the musicians with their wondrous flutes,
The way the vermillion columns of the wedding pavilion
Tinted the bride's white kimono pink.

Wanting to write you
When I'm away from home
Is a growing desire, but

It's more than that

The longer you're gone.
                                                             -Alice Twombly

Alice Twombly fell in love with John Keats when she was 15. But, she couldn't write like him, and eventually, didn't really want to. In the 1970's and 80's, she was one of the founding members of NJ Salute to Women In the Arts, and had many poetry readings. She was a winner of the NJ Poetry Monthly Annual Competitionin 1981 and a finalist in the Nation Magazine/Discovery Competition in 1982. Afterwards, she just taught school, raised two sons, and took up photography. Now, she is looking forward to returning to poetry writing and readings again. Thanks, to Zev Shanken, for your friendship and introductions.

****************************************************************************************

Vendage

I see you in a tub of champagne grapes
The juice runs down your neck
The must between your toes
Turns to cognac

I see you in a tossed salad
Curly frisee, bitter endive, green rocquette
Lightly dressed with oil from Sardinina
My toasted crottin chavignol

I see you in a wetlands of cattail
In spring I slice the tender root
Fall I pound the head for flour
Make cattail pancakes I feed to you
So you taste another world
                                                                -Carolyn Wells

Carolyn Wells is a chef and lover of words. She loves to forage for food in the wild, dreams about living in Sardinia and speaking Sardo, and rides her horse Sam whenever possible.

****************************************************************************************

Fur

"Nothing about this place ceases to amaze me," I was saying to my companion as we soaked in the cold water wearing the skins she had only so recently procured. They were from an animal that seemed to be a cross between a bear and a beaver (the front half, bear - the rear half, with tail, beaver). We had seen one only moments before, crawling above us on the wall and ceiling as we shivered in the water beneath the white cliffs that seemed more and more to resemble the sides of a giant tub. We had been on our journey for a while, and had become quite chilled by the time she had produced the pelts. We slipped into them as easily as we would a coat. The fur was heavy and waterlogged but somehow kept us warm, even though the fronts did not close. Actually they were very warm, but the weight of the soggy fur seemed to totally entrap us. I found myself huddling closer to my companion, my unprotected chest pressed against the wet fur on her back. It was then that I spoke.
                                                                                             -Bob Heman

Bob Heman is full of words. He lives most of his life on the page. The rest of the time he lives in Brooklyn.

washed in the blood of myself

behold myself of God
who takes nothing away from the world
that city whose light is myself
where the four living creatures stand
for all life unnumbered
behold twelve and one forty-four
thousand and one-third and one
matters no less than another
so i say blessed
are those invited to the wedding
feast of myself
i release the naked
who refuse holy dress and dinner
the bent hoarders of one seed
for worthy is myself who was slain
in error o foolish virgins
who dare say your lamps are dark
                                                                    -Jendi Reiter

Jendi Reiter is the author of the poetry collections A Talent for Sadness (Turning Point Books, 2003), Swallow (Amsterdam Press, 2009), and Barbie at 50 (Cervena Barva Press, 2010). Awards include a 2010 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists' Grant for Poetry, the 2011 OSA Enizagam Award for Fiction, the 2010 Anderbo Poetry Prize, and second prize in the 2010 Iowa Review Awards for Fiction. She is the editor of WinningWriters.com, an online resource site for creative writers.

****************************************************************************************

Morning at the Stable

This morning,
so early that the moon
still hole-punched the cobalt sky,
I padded down to wake the horses.
Frozen, still, everything suspended
like a Jack London story,
it was so quiet
I could hear the ponies'
dozing breaths,
could hear my heart
clunking in my chest,
could hear the Canadian goose
wipe her feathers against the icy air,
could hear the whisperings
of the Holy Spirit
still sleeping in the stable.
                                                               -Cecille D. Brant

Cecille D. Brant is a teacher at Delaware Technical and Community College in their English department, where she mostly teaches technical writing. She also works part-time as a stable hand in a small farm near her home. She has published two poems in Moon Orbital Odyssey News, a small poetry journal of the early 90s, and most recently, she won the 2010 William Butler Yeats Society poetry competition.

****************************************************************************************

Customer Number Three on Mars

          Blue-bloused customer #4 ate ribs and collard greens, while watching customer #3 who sat slack jawed, spread legged in the soft salon chair as the beautician shampooed her hair. Every so often she mumbled to herself Kow toy, kow toy eat Chinese food. Chabingo--go parachute jumping or Harpungi flies kites in mud green skies.

          Her chestnut head rocked back and forth, as wobbly legs navigated left, right in yellow nylon slacks which resembled a yellow jacket in heat.

          While under the dryer, her hands did Saint Vitus' dance on her thin lap. Her eyes shimmied up to the gold salon ceiling

          When she swayed disoriented out of the shop, customer #4 sighed and said, I remember when she was all right.  A quiet, educated woman. No one knows what happened.
                                                                          -Juanita Torrence-Thompson

American Biographical Institute Board Of International Research nominated her 2009 Woman Of The Year. She's Editor-in-Chief/Publisher of award-winning, international MOBIUS The Poetry Magazine and a Pushcart Prize nominee for poems in 6th book, Breath-Life (Scopcraeft Press). New York and African Tapestries is a Small Press Review "best pick". She won awards for poetry, short fiction, children's fiction and feature articles. Recent anthologies: Forgotten Borough, The Cento & Brevitas. She is published in Canada, Europe, Australia, U.S., online & her newspaper columns in New York and Massachusetts. She reads her award-winning poetry in Singapore, Switzerland, South Africa, Canada and the U.S. Her most recent book is Talking With Stanley Kunitz.  Her website is: www.poetrytown.com

Solace

I call most days.
He knows who it is when it rings
I bitch, I complain,
a verse he knows well.
After the ritual of anger,
he calms me,
he sympathizes.
He knows
nothing is resolved,
nothing ever will be,
he has been there--
the ballad of veterans,
fuck the world--
this is the veteran's mantra.
If I am lucky,
I will have a son who knows,
if I am even luckier, I will have a son who never knows.
                                                                                                   -Ian Holliday

Ian Holliday was born in Berkeley California. He spent eight years on active duty in the United States Marine Corps; he is an Iraqi War Veteran. Ian currently tends bar in New York City and is often spotted stumbling about the Upper East Side after last call.

[Editors' Note:  We salute you, Mr. Holliday, for your great service to this country, and we are honored to have the Marine Corps represented in this issue!]

****************************************************************************************

My Bag, His Bag

Dad's a doctor, and I shoot up anything I can filch from his black bag. Sometimes it's muscle relaxant, and I schlep around like my body's been wrung out of a clothes dryer. Other times it's heart stimulant, and my eyes bulge like the bottoms of shot glasses. Still others, it's psych meds, making my mouth foam, and my arms twitchy as dandelions in a wind storm. Yet every so often I luck out, and find blue beauties--morphine tablets--that I pulverize and pump lovingly into a vein, singing, "Everybody's beautiful...," kissing my mom, my brother, the neighbors' kids, the mailman, the newspaper boy, stray dogs, TV screens, political posters, bus ads. Usually when I clip his bag, dad acts like he doesn't notice anything's missing, even if I'm crawling on the floor. But after a few of my blue beauty love fests, he enrolls me in an out-of-state rehab.
                                                                                             -Gil Fagiani

Gil Fagiani's poetry collections include: Rooks (Rain Mountain Press, 2007), Grandpa's Wine (Poets Wear Prada, 2008), A Blanquito in El Barrio (Rain Mountain Press, 2009), Chianti in Connecticut (Bordighera Press, 2010) and Serfs of Psychiatry (Finishing Line Press, pending 2012).

****************************************************************************************

An Artist's Eyes
-for Terry

My friend, the artist, has eyes
that penetrate truth's thin veneer
to palette of hues beneath:
sun-dappled ochre of a child's dream,
fuschia brilliance of lust, obsidian
pallor of lost hope. Acrylics and oils
splash from her brush, swirl
on empty canvas, landscapes unfurling.
The waiting seed of life, thirsty
for color, drinks, drinks, drinks.
Stalks spear through soil,
buds blossom. Truth,
forever changed, visible to all.
                                                              -Bill Glose

Bill Glose is the 2011 Daily Press Poet Laureate, the Books Editor for Virginia Living, a regular contributor with other magazines, and author of the poetry collection, The Human Touch (San Francisco Bay Press, 2007). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such publications as Chiron Review, New York Quarterly, and Amoskeag.

****************************************************************************************

from Verses in an Empty Guidebook

III.

View this tapestry:

A young man's metal god
drinks to the health of
the molten core.

Unaware, he sings a din
while violins revolt
and set his piano on fire.

The fire.

That's what catches the eye.
                                                            -Brian Minnick

Brian Minnick is a recent graduate from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, with a Bachelor's in Music. He has been published in various small magazines, such as Cyclamens and Swords and Frontage Roads.

A Bright Idea

It was dismal before fire, and barbecues sucked. Reading after dinner would have been impossible, if writing had existed. Without bookcases, we invented poetry to store our legends. It rambled, boasted, and droned for days, but it was durable. We raised our wine cups and our spirits. Ignorant of our ignorance, we had a good time. But Zeus decided humanity was a big mistake and turned thumbs down. Maybe we were cavorting with his nymphs too much, or he grew tired of us trampling his wrathful grape vintage. We probably should have written nicer poems about him, some real puff pieces. None of that stuff was very bright. But too late - he was sharpening his terrible, swift sword. Lucky for us, Prometheus was irked with Zeus, and lit out from Olympus with some fire. It was the perfect gift for humanity, but we were so much easier to shop for then. You brighten my days, light up my nights, he sang as he ran. But he was in a rush, and good poetry takes time, even for a Titan. And fire changed everything. We got educated, built cities, and there was no getting rid of us. In his rage, Zeus made Prometheus' liver an eagle feeder. It was eons before Hercules unchained him and made eagle-feather hats. I'd be rhyming in Hades' blackness if Prometheus hadn't ignited our minds. So put down your book and toast Prometheus a marshmallow. Write him a poem with this quill.
                                                                                           -David Elsasser

David Elsasser was a host of the Saturn Reading for nine years, and has been published and featured in many of the usually suspect places around town. His chapbook, Last Call, was published by Poets Wear Prada Press. He currently runs a weekly peer poetry workshop, the Parkside Poets.

****************************************************************************************

nihilist

i come from nowhere
being far from never
floating in a mazeless void
toward a nameless ever
and if you come across me there
wave an invisible hand
and watch my disappearing form
in this silent airless land
and make certain you remember
if you mindlessly recall
who and what and where i came from
and how i took my fall
through infinite skies of empty
past petty vacant stares
a journey with no purpose
a journey to nowhere
                                                                - Vernon Waring

Vernon Waring has a background in journalism, public relations, and advertising. His poetry has appeared in The Iconoclast, The Great American Poetry Show, Ascent Aspirations, and Nerve Cowboy. His light verse has been featured in the Philadelphia Daily News, Saturday Evening Post, WestWard Quarterly, and WRITERS' Journal. A native of Philadelphia, he now lives in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

****************************************************************************************

SO - - HOW'D WE DO THIS TIME AROUND?  PLEASE, PLEASE LET US KNOW!!!