Everyday Should be Brautian’s Birthday Issue

sketch by fn wright

Four Poems by Alan Catlin

Richard Brautigan Trout Fishing in America

Winter leaks from the cracked tar
sealing around the carbon stained brick
chimney forming puddles of sludge and
ash along with the spilled hurricane lamp
oil; opening notes in a cacophonous
symphony of dripping from a neglected
metal roof. The forest at dawn ablaze,
a still life framed by the cracked window
glass of this isolated cabin, flies buzzing
inside ,worrying the remains, meals left
to fester, fishing rods and hunting rifles
unattended, propped up near the barred
from inside door. Invisible fires burn,
stoked in the cold, desolate hearth,
releasing ghosts of smoke burning down
to cold absorbent stone, taking within
the very essence of unnatural heat and light;
the spent pistol shell, crumpled pages from
a manuscript no one will ever read.

____________

 

blow it all away by db cox

— for Brautigan

onetime voice
of the counterculture
found—dead as hell
rotting on the floor
beside a bottle
& a .44
loser
in a one-man gunfight—
caught lowdown
during those risky seconds
of the night
when dark fingers
started to pull
at his dirty shirt
until he was mesmerized
by the sexy eyes
of that old whore suicide

trout fisherman at rest—

no more clawing
at the walls
of his box—cursing
the empty soul of sanity

no more stumbling
toward the end-of-the-line
up to his neck
in accumulated time

now that the fire
has died away
the wolves
have moved in
to have at his bones

howling
their perfect hate
now that he is gone

Old Photographs Stare Like Death by Ben Rasnic

Old photographs stare like death
from the pages of a high school
yearbook that read as an obituary
for Youth.

It is midnight and I am glancing
through the gallery recalling the faces
of old friends and past lovers
and I touch them

as if I was touching Death.
I close the book as if
I were the sealing the lid
on a coffin.

Drought Again, Brautigan by Harry Calhoun

The owl asleep in the rafters
wakes a minute and blinks
her wide sleepy eyes

and listens sturdy and prepared
for a drop of rain
through the roof

and yawns a thin crack
in her beak
and goes back to dreaming

of the rain, lucky rain
that will lull her back
into sleep: consider

the half-sentient lull
of the nonexistent rain
and the sturdy existence

of the never-changing owl.

Three poems by David S. Pointer

Joe’s Fishing Lake

A 14 year old
kid skipped
school and
caught a 52
pound Buffalo
Carp at Joe’s
pay lake then
I came on the
scene a couple
of years later
at age 9 or 10
catching a 14
and 16 pound
carp—the little
kids thought
I was the big
fish magician
still fighting
the tangle of
ten pound
test line as
if it were
Brautigan’s
Octopus
Frontier

____________

Remembering
Brautigan

Pitch forward
like a bullet
pocked corpse
into every page
of the reading—
own your own
pain into the ink
and maybe you
can avoid a non-
invasive hangman’s
noose into the
other world,
coming away
with a chap,
novel or even
nothing more
than a gray
day to evade
or celebrate

Lean against the letting go by Christopher Lawrence

like pressed garlic
creamy crushed
husk blown away,
i held her
forgetting the argument,
forgiveness and
playing with that
blonde hair
thinking of tomorrow

A Poem for F.N. Wright by S.A. Griffin

Fred Blows Out The Sun’s Electric Candles

for F.N. Wright, 1940-2012

and makes an infinite wish to celebrate the
happy birthday of everything

trout fishing with Brautigan
along the shores of golden eternity
somewhere beyond the cartoon apocalypse
of this whorehouse sadness

inside some tropic of light

Kenneth and your beloved Miriam
to catch you in their nets of love and language
and you are here
always

the crickets playing your song
fuck fuck fucking
as we all sing along

ride free Fred, rest easy
the war is over
The Lady’s loving kisses
(with roses in her hair)
to bring you home again

S.A. Griffin

3/16/2012

–Pictures courtesy of S.A. Griffin

Two Poems by AM Hirst

Divorce

I never knew I never wanted a marriage.
We tried this thing and it
tested and exhausted,
pillaged and sucked the life from us.
And still some say it looked fine.

We could have lived this life
ordinary and clichéd,
blandly and without joy,
and go through the predictable
motions determined for us
and slowly lose breath and die,
and on our tomb stones would be the words
we did what was expected of us.

And so I thank you for not
relegating and imprisoning,
punishing and sentencing me,
To a life of that kind of boredom.

And now we can both breathe sighs of relief
knowing no fault lies with the other.
It was simply something
we did not know we did not want.

____________

I Think I’ll Take a Lover

I think I’ll take a lover
who pulls me towards them
in the early hours of morning
when the rest of the world is asleep;
the dust of love’s chalk still powdery and soft
on our lips, our skin, our fingertips.
Eyelids heavy from the night’s communion.

Outside the songbird
rouses his throaty voice,
the diviner of dawn breaking,
while my lover moves above me
and through me
and fills me in places
I hadn’t realized empty
And those I did.
Across lines,
with color.

____________

Bio:  AM Hirst lives in the Kansas City area and is currently pursuing a BA in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing while drafting a third novel. 

Three Poems by Scott Owens

Portrait of the “New” South as a Pick-up Truck

Big and gray,
jacked up for clearance,
floating on 33s,
gun rack in the back window,
stag silhouette overlooking
community college sticker,
check it out as I storm
past on the disappearing interstate
merge lane, nearly forcing
your Prius off the road,
dangling from the unused
trailer hitch, oversized,
chrome-plated, flashing in sunlight,
even my truck has balls.

____________
Yellow Xterra

With the rear seat folded up
he could just fit stretched out
in the back of the yellow Xterra,
but he was exceedingly happy that
with the rear seat folded up
he could just fit stretched out
in the back of the yellow Xterra.

Through tinted glass he saw
a perfect sky of stars,
broken only by shapes of leaves,
knew the quiet of solitude,
absence of expectation.

The problem with desire, he said,
is the unlikelihood of satisfaction.

____________

On the Idea of Poetic Responsibility

I want to call in sick today
and stay home and write poetry.
I am sick, after all,
sick of clock-watching and making a living.
sick of dry-erase boards
and overstuffed books of overread literature.
sick of Frost and students,
not that any of them have done anything wrong.
I love Frost, and on any other day
I might want nothing more than to be with my students
and hear how they too have promises to keep,
and help them see the slipperiness of Frost.
But today there are more important things to do.
There is reverie and reflection.
There is memory to be pursued.
There are trails diverging in my mind.
There is this poem, and there is you
waiting for all the promises to be filled.