The Spring Issue of 3rd Wednesday
Category: Uncategorized
The Air Smelled Dirty
Massachusetts poet, Marge Piercy, remembers when houses were heated with coal. My family referred to our coal furnace as “The Octopus”.
The Air Smelled Dirty
Everyone burned coal in our neighborhood,
soft coal they called it from the mountains
of western Pennsylvania where my father
grew up and fled as soon as he could, where
my Welsh cousins dug it down in the dark.
The furnace it fed stood in the dank
basement, its many arms upraised
like Godzilla or some other monster.
It was my job to pull out clinkers
and carry them to the alley bin.
Mornings were chilly, frost on windows
etching magic landscapes. I liked
to stand over the hot air registers
the warmth blowing up my skirts.
But the basement scared me at night.
The fire glowed like a red eye through
the furnace door and the clinkers fell
loud and the shadows came at me as
mice scampered. The washing machine
was tame but the furnace was always hungry.
Marge Piercy
Wellfleet, Massachusetts
Slow Dance in the Kitchen
The best love poems avoid the use cliche words like love, heart, and soul. Here’s an example from Connecticut poet, Gina Forberg.
Slow Dance in the Kitchen
Clumsily he grabs my arm,
threads our fingers,
wraps his spare hand
around my baby fat waist.
Eyes a serious, recessive
blue inch up to my nose,
and he leads me, his arms
pointed, taut like a warrior
with a bow and arrow
toward the open window.
We spin in circles, feet light
on the cold tile floor
and I think of how I still
have to make him lunch,
drive him to the bus stop,
but when I look at his
eyelashes like butterflies
blinking, nothing is more
delicious than this moment
and when he dips me
and presses his lips
a little too long,
a little too hard
against mine,
I lose my balance,
grab his shoulders,
save myself from falling.
Gina Forberg
Fairfield, Connecticut
Your Voice
Our Poem of the Week comes to us from Malta. It’s not easy to write a fresh piece about a topic that’s been written about so much.
Your Voice
I hear your voice
As you talk on the phone with your friends
The kindness in your words is convincing
The laughter genuine
And for a split of a second
I remember
when you used to speak in the same tone to me
the same sincere laughter
and I forget
that it’s the same voice
you use to bludgeon
the insignificant
me
Kristyl Gravina
Zabbar, Malta
Groove Interrupted
Literature is a way for us to have experiences, good or bad, that we have no way to experience for ourselves. Poetry can be especially good at doing this, as demonstrated by our poem of the week, written by California poet, Deborah LaFalle.
Groove Interrupted
Huge ‘fros, perfect spheres of nappiness
five deep in M’s ‘60 Chevy Impala
subtle swaying to the silky smooth soul
of the Delfonics on 8-track
Didn’t I blow your mind this time?
Suddenly a siren, flashing red lights
consume the rear window
Our eyes meet each others’
bewildered – What’s up?
M ejects tape
Heavy-set officer approaches
takes the blue stance
“License and registration.”
We know the drill
M obliges
“Where’re you all going?”
“To get something to eat –
dorm cafeteria closed on weekends.”
I’m thinking…
Why should we have to explain?
“Is there something wrong officer?”
“I’ll ask the questions.”
Silence
flashlight beams in our faces
then in our laps
A walk around the car
looking, hoping
to find something
some small shred of evidence
to cite, worst yet – arrest
“Open the glove box.”
M obliges again
Nothing
Officer chucks M his IDs
“Luck was on your side tonight.”
Once back in his squad car
we exhale, M slides tape back in
but we don’t resume the sway
We’re not hungry anymore
Another day of DWB.
Deborah LeFalle
San Jose, California
Henry’s Swing Club
Satan bebopped into Detroit
with a wad that would choke
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
with a Saturday Night Special
holding a Full Metal Jacket Load
and with a Hell Hound Harmonica
one of those diatonic harps in the Key of C.
The devil came from Kansas City
and went dashing into Henry’s Swing Club
looking to jam with the hipsters and hustlers
the freakish Maltese Kittens and Fly-Girls
thinking he was DOWN with IT
but truth-be-told he was stickin’ like a Honky.
When Satan riffed back for a 12 Bar Blues
trying to hang with Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom
he got the boot once again off the Tree of Life
went for his Roscoe and got it snatched
came up late on his left-hand raise
and got his ass busted wide open again
for a parade of sinners to march on through
just like in that painting by Hieronymous Bosch.
Mark James Andrews
Harper Woods, Michigan
Jazz Funeral
Our poem of the week comes to us, via the winter issue of Third Wednesday, all the way from Norway.
Jazz Funeral
When my grandmother dies,
the teacher says
she deserves a Dixieland funeral,
so my uncle’s klezmer band plays
When the Saints and the local police
stop traffic as we march
behind the hearse, high-stepping,
bopping umbrellas, walking
the oldest member of our group
back to a New Orleans
she will never see again.
And I wonder what this town thinks.
Will it ever know
we lived within it,
that a world began
and will end
without a single public word
nothing more than an obituary
and a little wild music.
Allen Jones
Rogaland, Norway
Spontaneous Human Combustion
“He burned from the inside out, not the outside in. Now that’s real
proof that this phenomenon’s for real. And we’re all at risk.”
-Rick Barton (Director of the International ParaScience Center)
Maybe it begins as a singe, cinder
hissing from within, kindling beneath skin.
The flush must feel much like lust at first,
flicker-licks rippling concentric.
Or perhaps heat skulks in like a childhood
fever, caul-wrapping bonnets of fire.
Post-mortem pictures depict the same
grim room: its filth and fifth of gin, its Pall
Mall pack—one smoke left—curtains pulled
tight against noon. Even in photos, the reek
seeps through. Yellow on the window’s
sill, char-sweet on the carpet in plumes.
Every easy chair can be a pyre. No
matter, that our bodies are bodies
of water. Forget the bottles of rot-
gut, the acetone build-up. The barbiturates,
and the lit cigs blitzing house-dresses.
These flare-ups are spontaneous, impetuous
as all of us—bound for ash and about to burst.
– Erika Brumett
Seattle, Washington
Geode by Caroline Maun
Our Featured Poet in the Winter Issue of Third Wednesday is Caroline Maun.
Caroline is associate professor of English at Wayne State University. She teaches creative writing and American literature and is Director of Graduate Studies. Here is our poem of the week.
Geode
So much cosmic time to fashion
an aggregate of anguish.
We want to smash it open,
stroke the blades of crystal.
This could be your self
halved, your calcified sphere
cleft like a glistening delicacy.
Privacy shattered, exposing
the secluded methods of jewels,
molecules aligning, growing fierce
– Caroline Maun
Sully’s Hair
Our featured poem for this week appeared in the Fall Issue. It’s by California poet, Kat Lewis.
Sully’s Hair
The scent of honey drops swirled in milk
billowed from perfect waves of brown hair.
I always tried to convince myself
that Sully’s hair was the color of raisins,
greasy paper bags, or shit, but underneath
all my internalized lies, I knew that it was brown
like hickory, like Devil’s food cake, whiskey,
or grizzly fur. Like my father’s baby grand,
the butt of revolvers. In my boarding school days,
I dragged my fingers through the knots
in her Maker’s Mark locks, and held
the straightener there until I smelled the hair burn.
Even the smoke streaming from the strands
smelled like honeycombs.
– Kat Lewis
Berkeley, California
Third Wednesday Magazine 