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Gordon Phipps
Stephen Reilly
Mr. Reilly resides in Mackay, Queensland, Australia.
Sphinx Dust
Crumbling from the day of his birth He sucks salt from the ancient sea bed Skin cells flake and slough, become Sphinx dust under our feet, Sphinx dust A fine ash that runs through our hands. Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, all in turn Bolstered its flanks with mighty slabs To hide…
An Argument with Semonides* on His ‘Types of Women’
*Greek poet circa 7th century BCE who described women negatively in terms of a sow, a fox, a dog, a donkey, a weasel, a horse, an ape, a bee, the sea, and mud. In Memory of Dr. Cherie Haeger 1. Priscilla: The Pig The one you call a bristly sow,…
Or Wend, Skull, With Your Teeth Like Bright Armor
Don't want to be dead remembering those I have not spent time listening to, here on this perch so earthy. Damien Hirst's skull thinks like this Studded death-head worth nine million, part of an enormous hedge fund billowing, while art triumphs over art—like Hirst's shark shredding (don't be late; show…
Dancing in Baghdad
We follow shivering cello strings and arrive at the new embassy, sandbagged and sounding the clicks of crystal: a gala in the old vein. The pretty women of politicos fill their stitches, oil tycoons trade hot and eager handshakes. There is fine food to eat. You look beautiful tonight with…
On the Silk Road
A hard scrubbing we had on the rim of the desert. There is no good time for such a going. We took the ancient route Polo had used crossing Asia after he left the throne of the Golden Khan and his soft, silk girls washing his polished hands and feet,…
Wolverine and White Crow, Motivations, Insurrection and Resurrection
WOLVERINE AND WHITE CROW Piss-legged, drag-assed khakis tucked into jump-boots, a sleeping-bag coat torn by river-bank blackberries— parks himself across on the bench opposite the man writing at a riverside picnic table. Clears his throat: Asking you a favor—guess my age. Close enough. Thirty-eight this year, okay. Ask me a…
What I Did in the 20th Century
I marched with Martin I walked on the moon I survived Pearl Harbor I heard Bing Crosby croon. I pitched to Babe Ruth I studied with Yoda I buried Paul I married Rhoda. I raised the flag On Iwo Jima I dropped the bomb On Hiroshima. I changed my name…
Via Negativa, Visiting Uncle Peter’s Grave, Carolina Grasshoppers
VIA NEGATIVA —in memory of my uncle, Peter Roesch James, Mosquito VI navigator and gunner, 45 Squadron RAF. Killed in Burma, 28 February, 1945. I The way a sudden break in a song makes the song more apparent. I came to know you only as the things you were not.…
In the First Days of the War, Memorial Day
IN THE FIRST DAYS OF THE WAR In the first days of a boyish war, the days of sand-kicking and puffed chests, all the toys still banging about the field, spilling their beautiful fire, so that at distance, on some far Karakoram, or the moon, this might seem a joyful…
In the Delhi Station
Time, and the train to Agra, a dualism: the one moving, the other still. I sit in the compartment car and touch the polished wood. It is so smooth, rubbed by the numb thumbs of the dead hundreds. Out from its deep grain glow the eyes of lost Englishmen; now…
Unerring Mercy and Pure Grace
Madrid, Spring, 1466 Above the plains of Castile's civil war fourteen-year old Princess Isabel, half-sister to King Henry, drew apart from the royal household's lawless core, existing as a pearl within the shell of court corruption, intrigue and black art. Virtually an orphan, with father dead and mother sent away,…
Girl in the Fire
At night she dreamed of fires, of red-orange flames rising from a small hill of dead leaves like the one her father gathered in their back yard and set a match to before the rain came. She'd played a game of catch-me when the wind heaved the smoke curl on…
Baby Girl
“Yes, ma'am. Cold outside to-day,” He grins with large white teeth Pulling his collar up against His salt and pepper beard And the frigid, gray morning. “It's the wind,” I reply, Arriving at the bus stop Flipping back my errant scarf. “Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. It's the wind cuts through…
Gasoline
{prophase} Ten Thousand, Thousand Scimitars, Curved like Gleaming, Deadly Moons in Desert sands, Stood like Testaments in Pain And Answered Not The Riddle that they made Of Whence their Owners fled, and Why, Beside each Blade, A Severed, Thieving Hand was laid, Its Digits Splayed and clutching Windy Grit, And…
The Rose of Ilium
Young Pelides, whose hands yet reeked with death, Having purloined Troy's finest son of breath, Beheld Patroclus' husk in flames consumed, His dearest comrade in Fate's hands entombed. No lover nor the river Peneus Would greet the valiant son of Peleus In Phthia, where his noble father stayed, For, to…
Anxiety Disorder
he comes for her making her kind heart beat fast her beautiful blue eyes blur her gentle hands cold her long lovely legs weak knowing he could never make her do anything wrong he is satisfied with diminishing the world by stealing her smile a smile that pushes away the…
I Also Married the War, The camis come out, War Paperwork
I ALSO MARRIED THE WAR Death hung around our wedding, close as the jangle of my pearl earrings. I gauzed myself in a white flag. The rings on their pillow looked like medals on a chest, and they fit tight as dress blues. And the groomsmen carried swords in Sam…
El Comandante Has Asked for a Song
for Victor Jara and everyone who sang Just after the 9/11/73 CIA coup toppled and murdered popularly elected Salvadore Allende in Chile, and shortly before fevers consumed Neruda and he died: “The body of Victor Jara, mutilated, how could you not know? Oh my God! If this is how they…
Instrumentum Vocale, Gladium Vocale
INSTRUMENTUM VOCALE So Cattalus the Greek, one of the original gladiators gave Spartacus the Roman general's stallion after the battle of Salinae and the defeat of the four legions near Lucania. The women were stripping the Romans' armor, cutting the throats of the wounded, taking off fingers for the jewels…
Martyrdom of a Mutt
That first day in Vietnam they snag a batch of us young imbeciles Herd us into one of those mandatory oh-rientating lectures war hygiene security There are ninety-nine kind of snake in Veet Nawm Ninety-eight are p'ison and t'other one eat you whole There's a island in the South China…
The Old Salty Poems
I. The Old Seadog In 1900, he is a stranger come to their town, now renting, living in the old O'Grady place, not to farm, not to fix up despite its being rundown, just to live out his days, what with Death staring in his face. The word around is…
McVay, Thersites
McVAY All numbers, knots on a rope. Calendrical. Tally. Makes twenty-three Novembers I've known hate was coming in the mail. “Merry Christmas, killer Of my son/slash/husband/slash/lover.” Stockpiled years' unease. I've squirreled a dresser-drawer-full. Bent over in dying's life-raft, I idled Letters too, in my head. Waste; no way to send…
Infidelity, For Those Held Captive for Decades in Darkness, The Map
INFIDELITY ...After the first death there is no other. —Dylan Thomas When the hawk slaked down into the garden and entered the chittering bud of linnets and sparrows feeding on the bread crumbs and stale cereal, you were telling me the story of how you took it upon yourself to…
You Had to Be There
“War is good for you.” Tim Page as quoted in The First Casualty by Philip Knightly In Vietnam, they grew a kind of miniature banana too small for export, but orange and sweet. You had to be there, that morning, on the banana road where an explosion took off the…
Ghosts
She cared nothing for the useless, material things that others seemed to live for. She could not understand the way they thought the brand of shampoo, jeans, sneakers mattered so much that a mockery would be made of anyone who purchased an unknown, a “Kmart blue light special” as they…
The Song of Iraq
I saw the sheik wiring his beard with explosives. I saw the sheik leading young foxholes out of a journalist's slit-open throat. I saw the sheik at Pak Punjab eating tomatoes that were bombs. I saw the sheik holding our president's hand and robbing the faces of the dahlias there.…
Gulf War News Sign-Off, with Video Tricks
Today's war ended the way yesterday's war ended: a Star-Spangled Banner duet scored for Mount Rushmore and F-16. It's two shots of tequila past midnight. The F-16's wings hallucinate — through the spotting scope of my twenty inch Zenith — into sky-calipers, measuring the gap between Lincoln's eye and ear.…
Marsha Truman Cooper
In 1987, I won first prize in the New Letters Writing Contests for poetry. I also won the Bernice Slote Poetry Award from Prairie Schooner in the early nineties. Pudding House Publications reissued Substantial Holdings, a chapbook of mine that won their competition in 1986. The 2002 edition has been…
Rob Cook
Rob Cook lives in New York City where he co-edits Skidrow Penthouse with Stephanie Dickinson. His first manuscript, The Cellophane Madonnas, was a finalist in the New Issues Poetry Prize competition and a finalist for the Gerald Cable Book Award. His work has appeared in The Bitter Oleander, New Orleans…
Soldier’s Heart
They call me madman of the trees, king gone astray, witless one, mimic of birds, folly's friend, the wild mad king. Sweeney? I am not Sweeney. Sweeney was a tall strong man who raised his voice and his arms against anyone who slighted him. He was a king, that tall…
To Sing the World
Each language has its own music And those who sing it are its harmonic true From opening bars they recognize each other They are as staccato to legato As guttural is to milk As icebergs from lagoons They smolder and hiss as fire steams from water As plucked guitars from…
Broken Windows at Reims
In the town of Reims, the office of the bourgeois optician kept rubble behind its facade, and Will saw the shutters on the second floor, fallen together like an ineffective fan above the balustrade. Near the cathedral, he passed the cemetery, arbitrary joke, bombed, enormous marble stones ripped from their…
Floating Girl (Angel of War)
“...doubling up in pain like a river with these white flowers….” Jose Louis Hidalgo Floating face down, She is part of the river's script of bodies, Its holy marginalia. Her head floats inside her own hair Her body drifts in moonlight, in privacy beyond rain: the hour has lost its…
Patricia Monaghan
Patricia Monaghan, daughter of a Purple Heart veteran of the Korean conflict, is a convinced member of the Society of Friends (Quakers), to which she was drawn during the Vietnam War by its testimonies of simplicity and peace. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Dancing…
Joel Long
Joel Long's book Winged Insects (1999) was chosen by Jane Hirshfield as winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award. His poems have appeared in Bellingham Review, Poet Lore, Sou'wester, Seattle Review, Willow Springs, Prairie Schooner, Northern Lights, Sonora…
Robert Randolph
Professor Randolph teaches in the Department of English at Texas State University-San Marcos. A recipient of Fulbright scholarships in Finland and Greece, his poems have been published in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Mid-American Review, Lullwater Review, Plainsong, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Kentucky Poetry Review, MSS and Negative Capability. Bacchae Press…
A Midcentury Advent
Time in this house was thick-woven, like the wool of the old workmen's caps doffed in the dark for early Mass in early winter: spare Advent, purple over black, wax-and-wood smells, bump of heavy doors, whisper of heavy coats. The night watch at an ancient city's gate where neither kings…
The French Railroad at Quang Tri, Snapshots from a Battle, Mud-Walking
THE FRENCH RAILROAD AT QUANG TRI for Thomas “Pepper” Catterson Are they still there: those railway tracks I walked along at blood dusk, after a day tracking loco-motive men tracking me; green killers all, every one of us, hidden in the endangered landscape, overgrown with stubborn shrubs and pagodas, worn…
Another Country
For Cruz You live under a sky with no horizon. The mountains flap behind your home like a great dark bird. His claws are sharpened with silver coils that squeeze you, cutting you to shreds. While I wait for the gate to open, memories of you open: thick chested man…
Because We Are Men, Vets, Rehab. Journal
BECAUSE WE ARE MEN i. awake Those war-whooping days we retrieved the paper dog-eared on the steps in the damp, and spread it first thing on the counter with coffee. What was it that riveted us to the carnage ahead of politics (o bitter amusement), the comics, even the sports?…
1960-2002, A Testimony
(in honor of Thomas Lily) 1 From our graves, where our life's summation will be “here lies an old generation,” what shall we answer the young, those who found words of innocence? Who will bring a fresh bud to the tombs of men who breathed among flowers of doom? Who…
Richard Levine
Richard Levine's “Snapshots from a Battle” was published as a chapbook by Headwaters Press (New York, 2001). “Mud-Walking” was published in Rattapallax #4. “The French Railroad at Quang Tri” has appeared in Medicinal Purposes Literary Review. An LP is a Listening Post, “a nasty (usually two-man) detail, wherein you set…
Charles Atkinson
Charles Atkinson was born and raised in New England, graduated cum laude from Amherst College, and served with the Peace Corps in Manila, Republic of the Philippines. He completed a Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he currently teaches writing. His first collection, The Only Cure I…
Ned Condini
Ned Condini, writer, translator and literary critic, received the PEN/Poggioli Award for his versions of poet Mario Luzi (New York, 1986). Short stories and poems of his have appeared in Translation (New York), The Mississippi Review, Prairie Schooner, The Partisan Review, Mid-American Review, Negative Capability, Italian Americana, Chelsea, Yale Review…
For Jen
an elegy Jennifer, your relics leave me empty. They were never you. Shoebox of triangle-folded notes, red corsage, T-shirt (size small), photographs: at seven, on a cereal box, at nineteen, at odds with the world, on the beach, in a dorm room, laughing in their faces, the loudest voice in…
Old Hawk
It had been easy once— a dozen effortless strokes—just the right attitude of wings, climbing the wind as a child climbs a wave, floating upward, just catching the crest, then turning downwind for the easy glide. Now, circling, conserving every measure of energy, (a small movement below worth investigating) Old…
Intimidation
Intimidation by definition can only mean separation pits one against the other encourages retribution Mama Africa she lived the struggle evaded shadow men witnessed Apartheid crumble They confront the white policemen demand to know why the boy is being detained his arm wrenched behind his back an angled decoy He…
Stillborn
Every place our ship sailed was flown from the kite of my stillborn child. I saw him/her rise from an Incan mummy bundle, grow thickset and short to utilize the thin air of the Andes. I would not strap with the awful bindings to misshape her noble head in her…
