WHAT YOU CAN DO IN EIGHT MINUTES & FORTY-SIX SECONDS

by Neil Silberblatt




Listen to a performance of the first movement—
marked Allegro vivo appassionato—
of the String Quartet No. 1 in E minor,
by Czech composer Bedrich Smetana.
The quartet known as "From My Life",
due to the sustained harmonic E on the first violin
in the last movement, which represents the ringing,
the constant ringing,
the incessant ringing,
the maddening ringing,
in his ears that presaged Smetana's deafness.
I would recommend the recording
by the Pavel Haas Quartet,
which would leave you 23 seconds
to contemplate what deafness sounds like.
Or, alternatively,
place your knee ever so delicately
on another man's windpipe
and fail to hear his screams as his
life slips away.

Neil Silberblatt is the founder / director of Voices of Poetry, which has presented a series of more than 400 poetry events at various venues in MA, CT, NY & NJ, including The Rubin Museum of Art and Jefferson Market Library in NYC; The Mount / Edith Wharton's home in Lenox, MA; and Ike & Randy's Boxing Gym in Paterson, NJ. His poems have appeared in several literary journals and anthologies, including Plume Poetry Journal, Tiferet Journal and Tikkun Daily. His most recent poetry collection Past Imperfect (Nixes Mate Books, 2018) was nominated for the Mass. Book Award in Poetry; and Neil has been nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize.

DESCENDING

The endless origination of my Black son

by Jessica M Granger

file photo

The bones of my pelvis shift like tectonic plates
to accommodate your breadth, the gap widening—
a cramping uterus expelling you in tireless
pulses, your spherical head firmly cradled
against my ischium as you peek through—
the obturator foramen at future possibilities,
but more likely pain for what I’ve made you;
the weight of you ripping my rigged pubic
symphysis in two, the way a cop may you,
you placing a foot in a notch of the iliac crest,
(but not too quickly) and heaving as you plummet—
straining as your spine slides against my sacrum,
the violence of it snapping my sacrospinous
ligament, you grabbing it with your tiny hand—
holding me together as I dislocate your shoulder;
yet you release it for your final descent, must
let me remain broken and unfixed in the bed as
you struggle to clamber in millimeters toward
your final effacement with me, your first as you—
egressing from the canal to open your aboriginal
eyes and face the predisposed world ahead of you.

Jessica M Granger is a half-Cuban, half-Portuguese writer. She holds a bilingual MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas El Paso. She is an Army veteran, divemaster, and mother who seeks to understand life by writing about it. Her work can be found in TheNewVerse.News, SHANTIH Journal, The Molotov Cocktail Magazine, As You Were, and Ruminate Magazine, among others. She currently resides in Columbus, Ohio.

TO PISS WHEN YOU CAN'T WHISTLE

by Kim Doyle

"A Warden Says No to the Death Penalty" --The Story, APM, November 29, 2012

The minatory prayers, the hoarse clanging bells,
the procession westward from Newgate to Tyburn.
To sit in the cart facing the rising sun,
the noose around your neck, not the only one.

The dismal ditty, Psalm 51 on your lips -
to recite at the hands of Jack Ketch.
The frolicking crowds dance at Paddington Fair,
the gaggler, the topping cove, the roper was there.

To mount the three-legged mare,
to ride the horse foaled by an acorn -
the morning drop, the nubbing cheat,
the rough wool of the winding sheet.

Capital Punishment in its worm eaten coat,
the old fashioned, drop dead, hearty choke.


Kim Doyle points out that the United States still executes - joining in with fellow third world countries.