Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
Stymie Magazine a journal of sport & literature :: volume 5, issue 1 :: winter 2012
STAFF Brett Elizabeth Jenkins, poetry editor Billy Jones, associate poetry editor Erik Smetana, founding editor Kari Nguyen, nonfiction editor Julie Webb, fiction editor Matthew Ferrence, web editor Danny Goodman, social media editor
POETRY Dana Yost's “Bending Einstein” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Elijah Burrell's “Final Triumphs” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Kevin Vaughn's “Home Opener” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Heather Wyatt's “Driving Blind in the Ozarks” . . . . . . . . . 2 Maria Nazos's “Confessions of a Name Amputee to the Archaeologist” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 J. Bradley's “How to Fight a Biter” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Erin Elizabeth Smith's “Eruzione” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Donna Lee's “To Wake Us” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 COVER ART Rick Marlatt's “Tetris” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Eleanor Leonne Bennett: “Run” M. Clara White's “He Watches” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 B.J. Jones's “Gutterball” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 NOTES All works – art, fiction, nonfiction and B.J. Jones's “My Chucks are Grey Hightops” . . . . . . . . . . 6 poetry – contained herein are copyRick Marlatt's “Morning Duty” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 right of the respective author and/or Matthew Lippman's “Be Bobby Riggs” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 creator. Molly Sutton Kiefer's “Derby” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Matthew Lippman's “Commoner Baseball Blues” . . . . . . . 16 ETCETERA Matthew Lippman's “Field of Marigold” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Stymie Magazine is published online, Del Doughty's “How to Pick a Melon” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 bi-annually or thereabouts. Archives, guidelines and other related informa- Del Doughty's “Grace to the Learned” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Chad Redden's “Cattle Barn” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 tion is available for review at Rachel Marsom-Richmond's “She Pulled Out the Razor” 18 www.stymiemag.com. Tyler Gobble's “Charming” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Ed Coletti's “Boxing With Poet David Madgalene” . . . . . 19 Ed Coletti's “Synchronicity of Sport and Sex” . . . . . . . . . . 20 Charlie Gadol's “A Friend” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 ART The Art of Eleanor Leonne Bennett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
ISSN 2154-753X
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Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
Bending Einstein
H Dana Yost
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and tell him what is coming his way. I have read much this summer about the brain and its perceptions of time passing: We can make it slip more slowly, maybe even make it stop, and surely make it curl and invert so that we can see the past in ways we couldn’t before, and our past can sidle up to our present. The dead find ways to touch us, our old deeds mean new things, and if I can breathe at the right pace the clock will not move its hands. My father was there, is here, will always be, maybe not as young, nor as vigorous, but always be, and if I ask, he will start slapping fungoes my way, shouting: “bend your knees, turn your glove thumb-out,” a game we can play past sunset, without lights, play by heart with sound and shadow bending Einstein because time does not travel like light but like memory and ghost, then, now, always.
earing my father’s voice on a cassette tape of an old radio broadcast, listening to it over and over, calling my wife to the basement to hear it, calling my mother, playing the tape over the phone for her: it’s technology, I know, and easily explainable. But just two weeks before, I am sitting in a pew in our church at night, listening to a hospice music therapist tell about the sights and sounds the dying find before they slip from life: they see angels on the ceilings of their rooms, and see family in the glow of white light, and it’s this — the ghostly, the angelic, the unexplainable — that my father’s voice brings. The ballplayer that he was, feisty bastard who hit leadoff for a traveling Air Force team in the Fifties, on top of a lineup of four future major leaguers. The coach that he was, a believer in doubleFinal Triumphs steals, squeeze plays — suicide, never the safety — Elijah Burrell ____ pitchers who threw hard, and, mainly, a believer Although he’s never really worked too hard in those who committed like he did. at catching the ball, tonight’s the final game of his wondrous high school career; he’ll disreI am gliding through time, back to that late after- gard noon, the lure of letting up. He wants the fame, an eight-year-old, buzzed-cut boy at his side the numbers by his name in record books. when he speaks into the radio microphone. Live, He wings downfield, his head abuzz, unwound on-air stuff, by his girl, the homecoming queen in the stands, post-game interview and he is happy, and, more she looks noticeably, as he tows it in; fifteen, ten, five, touchdown. healthy: No disease yet, no long-term marring Somewhere, a worker bee spots a man near yet of the vocal cords its hive, home, queen. It lifts from clover from those menthol cigarettes he puffed beblooms, tween innings. all kamikaze bumble, absence of fear. There is youngness in his voice, the cheer of It withdraws from youthful honey, wax, digs promise, down and I want to reach through time and tug at his its sting into startled flesh, retreats in flight. wrist The boy spikes the ball under the roaring lights. [2]
Stymie Magazine
Home Opener Kevin Vaughn
Athens, Georgia
Winter 2012
during the trees’ passage from green to gold. You enter this queer pastoral, or turn another ____ way.
B
Driving Blind in the Ozarks
y kickoff, Seventh Day Adventist pews are cold. & tomorrow, bleary-eyed Baptists stomp & sing & praise their victorious Bulldogs, or curse their loss. Catholic
I
Heather Wyatt
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followed my crush to a football game. I don’t know when my life turned into this pathetic stream of unfortunate attempts to make sure my father gets his wish to have grandchildren. Not only is this man my boss, but it is safe to say this love of mine for him is like most of my loves, unrequited. I enjoy football because, like religion, it seems to be a force that settles into the cultural portion of your brain that says you have to like it. I do not like it enough, however, to chase it to Arkansas— but I did. For hours, alone, I drove on a two lane road, in the dark, in the pounding rain, between two solid lanes of trees and plains. Aside from the revelation that there appears to be no money available in Mississippi and Arkansas for street lights or signs, I didn’t think about much. I just looked straight ahead, for the love of football. The ride back was different, much more reflective, perhaps knowing what section he was seated in would have made my visit as a hardcore football fan more productive.
co-eds confess to their post-game nights & are relieved not of sin, but pledge anew into the Sisters of Saturday: daughters & mothers, French manicures, hair bleached to the roots, their black & red dresses cut high & low. Like eunuch priests in red polo shirts, polite, neatly pressed men who look fit to settled hobbies – stamps, sudoku, Kinky Friedman novels – debate out-of-towners until they turn rageful pink & upon the Bulldog’s loss weep into the skirts of their wives. Black men hold cardboard signs & form a corona of disinterested scalpers throughout the city. By law, they maintain a distance from the stadium. Monday’s police blotter details the student tackled naked with an empty Jack Daniels bottle & stabbing of an away team booster. The Red & Black – the student rag – feigns shame. If the Bulldogs win, Saturday is Athens clearly – there are no street names during this season where the stadiums’ chant echoes through weekdays – tents, Styrofoam, widescreen TVs & one-hundred tons of rubbish ankle deep over the campus green
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Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
I have cellular memory as an escapist. Houdini whispers my blood. I’m afraid to open my shirt for fear of soiled skin. I’m afraid of you in the ____ dark too. Fear your fingers
Confessions of a Name Amputee to the Archaeologist
I
Maria Nazos
n the college dorms at Iowa, blonde women who giggled and ovulated would read me like Braille. You say that you can read call me down the halls, “Maria, I once met me. Without my name what else can you call? You call me black diamond that people die to a girl…” until I grew find. Call me black to hate the sound of my own name and what it diamond, black widow, black name-tarnisher. means to carry it. I don’t trust you with my body. Afraid you’ll unpack my name so the con- Rub me clean with your patient hands. You don’t know what’s underneath. In this world tents spill out: that doesn’t listen, you understand The cousin, generations ago who stole his wife the vocabulary of my illiterate face. away; the sea captain father, so short in height and temper, the Maria: my mother’s mother,
How To Fight A Biter
who lived on the hills of Greece, surrounded by J. Bradley silver stone fences. Left with her parents for Illinois and couldn’t find the English to tell her first-grade teacher she burnt her hands, the Maria who wound up getting name-surgery upon coming to this country. As if her lingual
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rap your hands in duct tape. Shadow kick box. Concentrate on the stomach. Ignore the fact you won’t look cool.
2.
body wasn’t good enough, Maria who amputated Starve the animal. Keep your ideas her name. Traded the low vowels for a highsafe in the vault of a pint glass. pitched Mary, Maria who danced Learn the international sign of cock blocking. Ignore compliments. by herself at Greek weddings. Arms flailed overhead as if twirling imaginary scarves, and was 3. disowned. My father’s mother: Maria, who shuffled on heavy Fill a pillow case with cassette singles of “Blame It On The Rain”. Watch knees down mahogany hallways. Swinging gold Full Metal Jacket five times. Wear lamps from a chain.. Tiny cork crosses bobbed an Oscar Wilde mask. Ignore the law. in oil. Intoning the name of a god I never learned to love— 4. Maria, myself: lived in Greece until thirteen when she landlocked herself in the Midwest, burrowing away from the culture. Do you want to uncover me? Brush away the dirt of angry ancestors? Do you mean to say my name when I’m uncomfortable in it?
Tie your shoes. Walk away. Muzzle your ideas. Starve the animal. Keep your hands pocketed. Ignore amateur dentistry.
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Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
Eruzione
A
Erin Elizabeth Smith
____
s children, we all want to be Eruzione, Boston kid who put that puck
travel to on other days, so many acres left to be ridden through, unspoiled places between the borders of old trees. The sun noses over the edge of the field. I want to jump from field to field, so I direct my horse over the coop
above the Russian’s right shoulder. To pucker that net, the crowd
set for the hunt, and we cross the next clear stretch of earth, the next patchwork of heaven,
like a pulse in the wrist. Each night blades clattered under the kitchen table, while mom ladled casserole onto white dishes. After, I practiced throwing my fists
as if in a dream with no voice to wake us.
into the air, my skates lifting below me like winged sandals,
Tetris
T
Rick Marlatt
while Tony pretended to be Jim Craig, blanket curtaining his teenage shoulders. Now twenty years later, I’m on that same Placid ice, summer turning
he games began at midnight with the clang of two bottles chilled in available snow.
the glass opaque, the rink flooded with steam. It’s not like TV. Here, you feel
Sometimes we talked of childhood, the soul, debatable psychic tendencies, stars.
your breath in the cage, target the sinkhole of the goaltender’s pads
Other times we cranked the volume high, letting the theme song get inside our heads
and forget each golden miracle, the ice cube quickness of a life.
as we pieced our lives together by manipulating impossible angles. Then we’d mute the sound, listen to thunder whisper our vows through the window.
To Wake Us
M Donna Lee
____
y horse whinnies. The sound as clear as a clean sheet
being shaken out. The trees on the rim of the pasture absorb
The hours stacked up a lightning rod awaiting the sheerest bolt, our eyes colored over in darkness, furiously fighting off sleep.
the echo. The valley where I stand continues to roll out to places we’ll
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Stymie Magazine
He Watches
I
M. Clara White
maneuver my socks down Past my ankle you watch ignorant Of how all design starts in dance How she I you in each pirouette
It is the spot, not the spin that finds you Love the arabesque as the architect A horses hoof its quiet coffin bone On the threshold of collapse
Winter 2012
I blush at the freshly sprayed SHOES ____ sweat while my fingers loosen the LACES heart beats faster as I pull out the TONGUE moan as I perform the BUNNY EARS Now I'm ready I'm ready I'm ready to BOWL
The point in the toe, the ankle’s debut Quickens like brandy like steam Velocity or relief you can not sex It away it frustrates after all shouldn’t these Bodies be tight shouldn’t bodies be endless Like peripheral memories it leaves you behind To keen for a longer study of my ankle my sock
Gutterball
A B.J. Jones
youth director at my church when I was a youth compared SEX
before
MARRIAGE to bowling shoes Her point was that you don't know how many people wore that pair of shoes before you put them on your feet so SAVE YOURSELF UNTIL MARRIAGE
My Chucks are Charcoal High Tops
I
B.J. Jones
____
'm sorry Mr. Taylor, but I don't wear your shoes to play basketball. I don't even like the sport, and how did anyone play in these stiff, rubber
____ soles?
Chucks are not made for basketball. They’re not even made for athletes. All-Stars are made for people who fall asleep on the couch watching TV. These are not shoes you can just slip on for a game of HORSE or 21. Converse are patiently laced up for Taco Bell runs and Halo tournaments. I'm sorry Mr. Taylor, but the demographic has changed. It's not 6'5 in gym shorts. It's 5'5 reading a comic book, listening to The Ramones, and writing you this apology.
Now I can't BOWL without thinking about SEX
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Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
to pick up a tennis racquet, be Bobby Riggs. I’m not a woman hating Jew, I say. Rick Marlatt ____ He says, Settle down. n a school yard that wears the pummel Like the way George Brett settled down of snow drifts and feels the good rake when they told him of wind in its bones, his bat had too much pine tar or when one Croatian football crowd goes after chirping boys like yellow warblers the visiting team with stones, line up for fourth and long Molotov cocktails and the sharpened ribs as the sun lifts its heavy minutes higher. of cow sharpened to spears. A big grain-fed lefty heaves one deep It’s war out there but I want my New York Gito mountain range of mittens and frost bite. ant footballers A dove washes her wings in the sky. to call a truce. I want those Damn Yankees, for once, At thirteen, to be distorted, to not spend a hot nickel on a veteran leftie who will help them win the pennant. We’ve got arms that don’t fit the body, enough trouble with earthquakes, tsunamis and even deer. voices cracking beneath words, There are too many of them in New York State and that is why the ten year old boys and girls to watch the slow orbit of the ball miss a month of school, sit up in their tree towers as it arcs over their lives and pick the suckers off, one by one. and nestles in the arms of the elm tree, Flower me a field, I say. The poet next door, the famous one with all the to huddle around it like a shrine, books and Tonka trucks, says, Hey Lippman, you’re so damn corny, the cache of dreams just out of reach why don’t you leave it alone. It makes me sneeze. hard breaths ghosting the hollow air. I reply, Come on over and I’ll make you a salad. He does, thank god, and is especially thankful for the fruity vinaiBe Bobby Riggs grette Matthew Lippman ____ I have rubbed all over his wild, organic radish. here are all the sportsmen in their silver and gold uniforms to make the peace? The soccer players and the badminton masters? I have looked them up in the telephone books, called their wives, invited them over for dinner. Henry Aaron. Mark Spitz. Nancy Lopez even though she’s a woman. I walk out of my house this afternoon and the goldfinch tells me
Morning Duty
I
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Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
Derby Molly Sutton Kiefer ______ ____________________________________________________________________________________
M
y daughter bobs and pivots in my lap and nearby, someone tells me (again)—three years old and her legs could splay, tubed up in miniature skates, falling small, her hips as wide as the span of my hand, they do not know how to say hello or hug a lover close or shimmy, spend one hot lap—I close my eyes to it all, not wanting the alarm to call off the jam.
—each wheel, a spun coin sliced through grubby rubber —each turn of light, stocking glare there is pump in sprung curl and a hey yeah appreciation of the curve that makes the belly dance famous— wheel away the night, shatter sonnets coast to coast—the shutter clicks them in place, one girl bound for emergence, another spinning off to the sidelines.
The Art of Eleanor Leonne Bennett Words and Pictures by the Artist
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Balance Carefully [8]
Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
The Art of Eleanor Leonne Bennett Words and Pictures by the Artist
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Eat
Get Back Better At [9]
Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
The Art of Eleanor Leonne Bennett Words and Pictures by the Artist
Children a
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Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
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Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
The Art of Eleanor Leonne Bennett Words and Pictures by the Artist
Walking Throug
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Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
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Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
The Art of Eleanor Leonne Bennett Words and Pictures by the Artist
Work of th
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Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
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Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
Commoner Baseball Blues
G
Matthew Lippman
____
uy brings a mitt to the ballyard, sits in left center, drinks three beers, feelin’ Homeric, like he can bust up any army from Troy, summer sky winding its way up his shirt sleeve, number 17, that’s Keith’s number--old Cardinal, forever Met— a drunk himself, till he woke up one morning in the back of a van with his baseball socks pulled up to his chin and everyone wanted to cry. Not for this guy, in left center, at the railing--he’s a Mozart, a Chopin, a good ol’ Schumann because first he stuck up his right hand into the air for the melody then followed with his gloved for the rhythm and caught the shot off the bat, an arrow from the bow, that slumping Francoeur belted, first pitch, hanging slider that slid through the New York night right into our man’s leather. It’s winning the lottery, getting the blonde from Malibu, moving into the Chablis after a mug of Coors. And the real Hernandez is in the t.v. booth saying to the guy, who has no idea nice moustache old man, all of his left center New York lopsided and loopy baseball boys dancing the dance of the common man even though it feels for a moment that life is something else more than the 7th inning stretch, the first pitch,
the equipment guy washing all the sweaty jocks.
Field of Marigold
B
Matthew Lippman
____
ig guys fall on top of other big guys and break each other’s bones. Some of them throw up blood on the fifty. It’s fun to say, I slept with her on the fifty. That stuff never happens. What happens is that it rains for nine hours and the lads in latex strap on their jocks to tear up the guys’ knees across the line; they call it the line, it’s a field of marigolds. Up in the stadium boxes very rich people eat shrimp and drink gin. The elephants down on the field crash each other’s heads open. Some kid in Douglaston can smack his best friend in the face with a fly swatter and scream: Touchdown. Other kids sit in the stadium with spiked hair and beat their girlfriends with the edge of a ticket stub. The girlfriends don’t scream, they head butt their boys back and everyone raises a fist. It’s like America’s gone crazy all at once for fear of reminding itself that there is a field of marigold in every supermarket and skyscraper, in every torn up battlefield across the ocean, in the ocean, and all we’ve got to do to save our children is imagine it even if that means building a boat with five broken fingers. Hey, the big, bald guys down on the turf do it every Sunday, their mother’s watching in the rain the side of the sideline gone berserk,
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Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
the game ball that twitters and rotates from the busted hand of one guy to the busted belly of another guy, in the end zone, slap ass, grab ass, six points, extra point, it’s good!
[Grace to the Learned]
I
Del Doughty
_
left my Madison Avenue office tower, ran through the cold, wet night and sat at the end of the bar, still hopped up on a day’s worth of coffee and doodle. The place was fire-hazard full. How to Pick a Melon The head of the guy sitting next to me had disDel Doughty _ appeared ost people think you flick it with into the darkness of his hoody and he groused, your nail none too politely, as he pounded back his beer. and listen for a hollow thump. “I’ve thought it through,” he said at one point. But that method has been known “And anything’s possible. Maybe God to fail gets his pleasures from our pleasures.” and leave one feeling like a chump. Not quite the quiet words of the wise, So here’s advice that’s hard to trump. but then again, he didn’t seem to care whether I I read it on the Internet was listening. (admittedly, with some regret.) Which is why, after pounding back a few beers myself, The first thing that you look at is the shape. I held up his words for inspection, like someYou want something symmetrical, thing I’d discovered not tapered at one end the way that grapes in an online archive, and I came to regard them are near the stem. Evenness is critical, as grace whether it’s oblong or it’s spherical, to the learned. Anything is possible, I thought: and botanists will swear an oath the complicated behavior of subatomic particles, that symmetry implies good growth. the blueberry fields of New Jersey, the immortality Next, check out the color of the rind. of crabs, a tree filled with angels. It should be green, but the sweetest melons have a splotch of creamy yellow, a sign that they’re as succulent as Helen. Look for it the way Magellan a route around the globe if you’d like to slice a tasty lobe.
M
And last, you’ll want to judge its weight. A melon should feel heavy for its size. The density will tend to correlate with juiciness and sugar. Both are prized, of course, by picnickers, who rhapsodize about such things. “My word. My word!” they’ll blurt between their slurps. “My gosh. My word!”
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Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
make more connections.”
Cattle Barn
S
Chad Redden
he watched from the fair-ground cattle barn bleachers.
“The handler is judged not the dog. Never the dog.” I walked within the invisible borders of a show ring.
_
Wondered: does all of Ohio looks like this? When I will see a falling star? “We’re not leaving here until you get that turn perfect.” Wanted summer to end, school to start again and every damn dog in the universe to die.
a
“You could be dragging something dead and stinking behind you and the judge wouldn’t She Pulled Out The Razor Rachel Marsom-Richmond notice. Their focus is upon your abilities as a nd shaved my back and arms, handler.” hard to reach on my own. The barber took care of my head Flattened pop-corn boxes and sawdusted maearlier this morning, now nure in my path. bald as a baby. I let her take the blade and shave the palms of my hands. “Keep the dog between you and the judge.” I napped before the meet, sliding off the sheets without the grip of hair. I felt Held the leash tight. The dog to my heel. cold, pulled blankets over my head, Grasshoppers in the dust “Smile! You must look like a Junior Showmanship Champion.” sprang to avoid my steps. My teeth dry from smiling. “Why didn’t you bring your regular tie? How will you impress anyone with a clip-on?”
_
ready to dive into the blue water, slick against my smooth body. Exposed nerve endings charge with anticipation of the win.
Charming
C
Spasms hit my lower back from walking straight Tyler Gobble _ as a yard stick. ity bus depot mid-day May these townspeople and their cigarettes “You must talk to your competitors after Wal-mart bags, changing buses. the show. Make connections now. Someday they will be professional handlers or breeders or I’m here for a divorce, well not here, judges.” across the street at the courthouse my wife, well ex-wife, well soon-to-be ex-wife Aqua-Net on the dog’s hair vapored in the heat. Headache. Dizziness. pale hair flaps from two blocks down as frantic as that twenty year old mother of three “You can win scholarships or one day go all in diapers wiping their fingers on the glass. to Westminster and be on TV. Then, you will [ 18 ]
Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
Boxing with Poet David Madgalene
I whisper, city bus riders are people, too, this troubled mom and the woman in pleated jean shorts shouting into her cell phone:
A Ed Coletti
“Oh baby I finished my essay it’s about sports.” I write divorce in the floor dust, erase it, write sports between the tiles. “Wanna hear it? I’m so happy,” she says, and ain’t that something. She’s waiting for Route 8 to the community college. 1500 bucks a year for a certificate: TYLER GOBBLE CAN WELD or TYLER GOBBLE CAN NURSE or TYLER GOBBLE CAN READ
_
s we began circling, I observed to David that his shoelaces were untied. But do you think he fell for that old
trick? Yes he did, and I tagged him with a straight left bloodying his nose something terrible. I didn’t give him time to stanch the flow but waded in with a flurry of combinations to his jaw and midsection. David wobbled, but managed to say, “Good shots” then continued by stating his preference for Petrarchan over Shakespearean sonnets. During a brief caesura, as I prepared my reply, I felt my face torn apart by the fiercest blow I’d ever taken. I never saw it coming, and he was all over me with hooks, crosses, upper cuts, pentameters, couplets and epigrams. I reeled and rocked and knew that this guy deserved my very best strategy and tactics.
“Michael Jordan was a basketball player.” Good job. I believe in hooks like a marriage certificate, like words printed on paper but I know paper doesn’t make buses go or fix problems--leaky heart valves or saggy foundations. Water drips onto the second child of the young mom. It wails despite the coos in its ear. “Basketball is a sport played by tall black fast men.” Eeeek. Charming, the door here, finger smudges
Bouncing off the ropes, I hit him with my best impression of Mike Tyson’s voice: “The ref stole my title, and I have children to take care of”
Then I got in a couple of spondees but he was too young and fast. Madgalene tattooed me with trochees, tetrametered me mercilessly, and sent me reeling into the ropes with his hyphy poem. I reclined against the top one pretending, a sound like the rattle of a rim. “Michael Jordan to catch my breath which was coming to me shot the ball in wooden cubes trailing sawdust all over my so good but also defend good.” I ask how are throat. you and she says At least I pretended to pretend. fine and I say nice day and she says yes and I say Such is the boxer’s inner chess master. how are you. Madgalene wove an epic tale himself. and tiny scratches. To believe in something best is the body in motion maybe because when I see my wife, well ex-wife, well soon-to-be ex-wife walk up I hear
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Winter 2012
neither of us threw another punch. Then we looked at each other. David exclaimed, “Are we out of our fucking minds?!”
each of us was inside the other's clothes, and the touching,
Then he decked me with that same damn hyphy poem, I shoulda seen it comin’ that time. So no rope-a-dope next time for the young contender. I took an 8-count, mandatory at my age staggered back on to my feet. I felt it wise to offer that we’d better clean up for our poetry reading.
like feather-soft jump shots and finger rolls, more than the game itself and I was carrying you protesting "Not up the stairs!"
and we...and now I'm rewinding But trust me, it ain’t over yet, some real ugliness the rest of that game so hastily is sure recorded to begin at the precise to break out here tonight at the reading. moment the Hoyas, I may appear to be old, tired and spent, but just keep your eyes on my shuffling feet and Blue Demons, you, and I know became all tied up. clearly that something is going to strike you high up above, right there in the middle of your poetastin’ mush-melons! A Friend
H Charlie Gadol
Note: This poem appeared misprinted in the Autumn/Winter 2011 issue of Stymie Magazine. We have reprinted it here as it was written for your reading pleasure!
is body kept you alive. Frozen. After the storm you carried him down the rockface on your back.
Synchronicity of Sports and Sex
R Ed Coletti
_
ewinding video tape to the moment Georgetown and De Paul were tied
when I'd been distractedly kissing you on the couch and other places, oh, but it was such an important game, yet [ 20 ]
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Stymie Magazine
Winter 2012
Contributors
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Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a photographer and artist who has won contests with National Geographic,The Woodland Trust, The World Photography Organisation, Winstons Wish, Papworth Trust, Mencap, Big Issue, Wrexham science , Fennel and Fern and and Nature's Best Photography.She has had her photographs published in exhibitions and magazines across the world including the Guardian, RSPB Birds , RSPB Bird Life, Dot Dot Dash ,Alabama Coast , Alabama Seaport and NG Kids Magazine (the most popular kids magazine in the world). She was also the only person from the UK to have her work displayed in the National Geographic and Airbus run See The Bigger Picture global exhibition tour with the United Nations International Year Of Biodiversity 2010.Only visual artist published in the Taj Mahal Review June 2011. Youngest artist to be displayed in Charnwood Art's Vision 09 Exhibition and New Mill's Artlounge Dark Colours Exhibition. Elijah Burrell: Currently, I am working toward my MFA in the Bennington Writing Seminars. My poetry has been published in The Sugar House Review, Muscle & Blood, Swink Magazine, The Country Dog Review, The Penwood Review, The Furnace Review, The Honey Land Review, Blast Furnace, and Under One Sun. I was the recipient of the 2009 Cecil A. Blue Award in Poetry, and a finalist in the 2010 Pinch Poetry Contest. I reside in Jefferson City, Missouri with my wife and two little girls. Poet and Painter Ed Coletti graduated from the Creative Writing Masters Program at San Francisco State University (under Robert Creeley). Coletti, a Vietnam veteran, is widely published in this country and Europe. He is publisher of Round Barn Press in Santa Rosa, California and has operated the popular internet sites ″Ed Coletti’s P3” and ″No Money In Poetry.” Ed’s latest published book is When Hearts Outlive Minds from Conflux Press in
2011. Del Doughty: As far as biographies go, I am hoping that Malcolm Gladwell will write mine. Until then, though, I can reveal this much: I teach at Huntington University, and I have written a few books of poetry, most recently a Kindle ebook entitled, "A Pack of Pink Cosmos Seeds, the Wide Ocean, and Most of the Cars at Wal-Mart." Charlie Gadol lives in the Hudson Valley, practicing medicine and writing and reading poetry as often as possible. Tyler Gobble is lead editor of Stoked Journal and a contributor with Vouched Books. His chapbooks are Stale Champagne (Artistically Declined Press, 2011) and Tell Me You've Got Good News (H_NGM_N Books, 2011), both of which are available online. Find more at www.tylergobble.com. My name is B.J. Jones and I live in Dubuque, IA with my wife Amy. I am a graduate of Lindenwood University's MFA program. When I'm not writing and submitting, I am shelving library, filling prescriptions, or generating lenses. Donna Lee: My book, On the Altar of Greece, is the winner of the Seventh Annual Gival Press Poetry Award and a 2007 Eric Hoffer Book Award: Notable for Art Category. My poetry has appeared in journals internationally. Matthew Lippman is the author of two collections of poetry, MONKEY BARS (Typecast Publishing), and THE NEW YEAR OF YELLOW (Sarabande Books), which won the Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize. Rick Marlatt holds two degrees from the University of Nebraska, as well as a MFA from the University of California, Riverside, where he
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served as poetry editor of The Coachella Review. Marlatt's first book, How We Fall Apart, was the winner of the 2010 Seven Circle Press poetry chapbook award. His most recent work appears in New York Quarterly, Rattle, and Anti. Marlatt writes poetry reviews for Coldfront Magazine, and he teaches English in Nebraska, where he lives with his wife and two sons.
ject. More can be found at mollysuttonkiefer.com Kevin Vaughn: I am currently a doctoral student in English and Creative Writing at The University of Georgia. I also hold an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. My work has appeared, or is upcoming in Mississippi Review, Harpur Palate and Mythium.
Chad Redden is the author of a small book about Thursday titled Thursday (Plain Wrap).
M. Clara White reviews the newest, freshest poetry books for Zouch Magazine & Miscellany. Rachel Marsom-Richmond: I graduated with You can read her poems RHINO Poetry Jourmy M.A. from Northern Arizona University in nal, ZOUCH Magazine & Miscellany, NAP 1.3, May of 2009, and I graduated with my M.F.A. Eunoia Review (forthcoming December), Petfrom Georgia College & State University in May richor Machine (forthcoming), The Medulla Reof 2011. My poems have appeared in Three Line view (forthcoming) & Specter Literary Magazine Poetry, The Bijou Poetry Review, The Camel (forthcoming). Saloon, Quantum Poetry Magazine, and The Montucky Review. I have work forthcoming in Heather Wyatt currently works in the technical kitchen, Camroc Press Review, Full of Crow Po- department of a marketing company in Tuscaetry, and The Penwood Review. loosa, AL. Her work has been published in Public Republic, The Marr's Field Journal & The Erin Elizabeth Smith: I am the author of the SDS News Bulletin. She received her Bachelor’s book The Fear of Being Found (Three Candles degree in American Studies from the University Press 2008) and the chapbook The Chainsaw of Alabama and her MFA in Poetry from SpalBears ( Dancing Girl Press 2010). My poetry and ding University in Louisville, KY. nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in The Yalobusha Review, New Delta Review, The Dana Yost: I am the author of two recently Florida Review, Third Coast, Crab Orchard, published books, 2008’s Grace, a collection of Natural Bridge, and Willow Springs among oth- new poems; and last year’s The Right Place, a ers. I recently completed my PhD in Creative collection of essays and new poems. Both were Writing from the University of Southern Missis- published by divisions of Ellis Press, the Minnesippi and am currently a lecturer in the English sota independent publisher. My third book, A Department at the University of Tennessee. Higher Level (a history of the Southwest Minnesota State University women’s tennis team) is Molly Sutton Kiefer’s chapbook The Recent His- forthcoming. My poems have been published in tory of Middle Sand Lake won the 2010 Astound- such journals as Turtle Quarterly, Wolf Head ing Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Award. Her Quarterly, Awakenings Review, Open Mind work has appeared in Harpur Palate, Gulf Stream, Quarterly, Red Booth Review, Time of Singing, Wicked Alice, Breakwater Review, and Permafrost, South Dakota Magazine, Relief, Stone’s Throw among others. She currently lives in Minnesota Magazine and on Minnesota Public Radio’s webwith her husband and daughter, where she is at site. For 29 years, I was an award-winning daily work on a manuscript on (in)fertility. In addinewspaper reporter and editor at small and midtion, she serves as assistant poetry editor sized dailies in the Midwest, mostly in Minneto Midway Journal, and curatesBalancing the sota. I was twice named the Minnesota daily paTide: Motherhood and the Arts | An Interview Proper columnist of the year by the Minnesota [ 22 ]
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News Association, among other awards. I am the editor of a monthly newsletter for five rural Minnesota churches, and contribute stories to the newsletter on a regular basis, as well.
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