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Summer 2007
Caroline Albert
Donna Dixon
Shara Faskowitz
Adrian Heathcote
Stephen Mead
Michelle Morgan
Spring 2007
Featured Artist:Jennifer Balkan
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Alex Grant
DOWN IN THE WOODS AGAIN
You can't write poems about the trees
when the woods are full of policemen -
Bertolt Brecht.
In the interview room, The Three Bears perch
on plastic chairs. Behind the one-way mirror,
Goldilocks fidgets with her cellphone – she’s
expecting a call from a myth-based reality show,
and doesn’t want to be caught napping. Daddy
Bear is becoming fractious – if only he hadn’t
gotten so heavy into porridge, things could have
been different – but the Quaker salesman had
been so persuasive, given him the odd taste
once in a while, and before they knew it, those
fucking nuts and berries had lost their sparkle.
And then there was the unsecured loan on the
bedroom furniture - not to mention the mortgage
on the cottage. When you factored in the twelve
grand he’d anted up for the 65-inch plasma, it all
started to look like one of Grimm’s. “You realize
your credit-score barely makes 600” the lieutenant
sneered – those bastards, they really knew how to
kick a bear when he was down. He could see three
faint, shiny circles the lieutenant’s steam-iron had
imprinted on his shirt – he’d obviously never taken
the time to check out the November 1998 flat-iron
appraisal in ‘Consumer Reports.’ He felt nothing
but contempt for this man – he imagined him
naked, and guessed he had a very small portfolio,
something his wife had resented for years. “The
blonde – what do you know about her?” – the
lieutenant’s face was almost touching his muzzle.
“I could see she had no visible means of support”
he almost growled – “even Baby Bear noticed that.”
It was going to be a long night. The lieutenant’s
deodorant was kicking up a notch, as promised,
Mama Bear was quietly cataloging every mis-step,
and Baby Bear was busy sneaking sly glances
at the one-way mirror, his thoughts elsewhere.
FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL JESUS
In the Holy Victory Motel,
on the outskirts of Fuquay-
Varina, my divine moment
of epiphany seems to be
fast approaching. If it’s
true that I really am God,
as the message scrawled
on the toilet switchplate
in black indelible ink is
telling me, we just might
be in for a very long ride.
I watch the rain bouncing
on the red pavement, feel
thirty years and too many
miles condensing in black
puddles – it all looks the same
eventually, somehow. A cut-
down truck skites sideways
across a puddle, pirouettes
twice, nails the front end
of a silver-fendered, ancient
brown Buick - radiators hiss
in unison. I feel tired. I read
the switchplate divination
one last time, kill the light,
fumble hopefully towards
the Bed of Christ, the soft
pillow of Christ, the wake-up
call and full tea and coffee-
making facilities of Christ.
THANKSGIVING
To test a jet engine’s resistance
to bird strikes, a supermarket
turkey is flung into the churning
turbine and photographed
in stop motion, as it is cleaved,
frame by frame, like bologna
on a rack. No feathers, no blood,
just prime white meat, bone
and hormones. I look on
in dumbstruck wonder,
thankful that these people
haven’t tried to make sex
any safer than it already is.
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Alex Grant, a native Scot was educated in the U.K. and the U.S and now lives in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was the 2004 recipient of WMSU’s Pavel Srut Poetry Fellowship and the 2006 winner of The Randal Jarrell Poetry Chapbook Prize (Chains & Mirrors– Harperprints 2006) and the 2006 Kakalak Anthology of Carolina Poets contest. |
He has been a recent finalist or runner-up for Tupelo Press’s Dorset Prize, The Felix Pollak and Brittingham Book Prizes, Discovery/The Nation, The Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize, The Arts & Letters Rumi Poetry Prize, The Writers at Work Fellowship, The Sunken Garden Poetry Chapbook contest and Meridian’s 2005 and 2006 Best New Poets anthologies.
His work has recently appeared or is upcoming in The Nation, Connecticut Review, North American Review, Sycamore Review, Cimarron Review, Arts & Letters, Poetry Southeast, Eleventh Muse and Poemeleon, among others. He works up and down the eastern seaboard for a not-for-profit healthcare organization and divides his personal time between Chapel Hill and Carrboro, where he lives with his wife, his dangling participles and his Celtic fondness for excess.
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