 Arlington Literary Journal an ejournal also known as ArLiJo, is located in Arlington, Virginia and is sponsored by Gival Press. The intent of ArLiJo is to feature a variety of authors/poets/artists from around the globe whose work provokes readers to contemplate issues, etc. The work chosen promotes understanding and sensitivity across borders, even if initially the work may cause one to take a double-take. Staff Editor-in-Chief, Robert L. Giron Special 2020 Black Women Poets, edited by Teri Ellen Cross Davis Special 2020 Poetry Month Bilingual (Spanish/English) Edition, edited by Luis Alberto Ambroggio Special 2019 Women in Translation Month, edited by Katherine E. Young Access each issue by clicking on the Issue No. to the left of this homepage (scroll downward). Please note that publication in ArLiJo will be by invitation only, starting August 1, 2019. Any work published shall remain the property of the author/poet/artist and for any previously published work to appear the author/poet/artist must still retain the copyright of the work. Please note that ArLiJo is an ejournal. Payment for publication is a book from a selection of books listed below which have been published by Gival Press. Books Available to ArLiJo Contributors NONFICTION: Sexy Liberal! Of Me I Sing by Stephanie Miller FICTION: Dream of Another America by Tyler McMahon Ghost Horse by Thomas H. McNeely Mayhem: Three Lives of a Woman by Elizabeth Harris Show Up, Look Good by Mark Wisniewski That Demon Life by Lowell Mick White Twelve Rivers of the Body by Elizabeth Oness The Cannibal of Guadalajara by David Winner The Best of Gival Press Short Stories ed. by Robert L. Giron The Second Act by Tim Brown Barrow’s Point by Robert Schirmer POETRY: Poetic Voices Without Borders ed by Robert L. Giron On the Altar of Greece by Donna J. Gelagotis Lee Poetic Voices Without Borders 2 ed by Robert L. Giron Songs for the Spirit by Robert L. Giron On the Tongue by Jeff Mann Bones Washed With Wine by Jeff Mann The Great Canopy by Paula Goldman Sweet to Burn by Beverly Burch Protection by Gregg Shapiro Honey by Richard Carr 12 Sonnets for the Zodiac by John Gosslee Adamah: Poème by Celine Zins |
Featured in ArLiJo Issue No. 146 Interview with Jona Colson [JC] poetry editor of This Is What America Looks Like: Poetry & Fiction from DC, Maryland, Virginia (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2021) with Robert L. Giron [RLG]. RLG: I’m focusing on the poetry in the anthology, but to start, who came up with the idea for the anthology? JC: The fiction editor, Caroline Bock, had the idea for the anthology. It had been over 25 years since the Washington Writers’ Publishing House published an anthology, and Kathleen Wheaton, the president of the press, agreed. I offered to edit the poetry for the anthology, and, luckily, they agreed. RLG: It’s not often that one sees poetry and fiction in an anthology vs a journal, do you believe the two genres balance each other? JC: They balance each other in terms of craft. One genre distills images when another can expand. The use of dialogue and figurative language. The anthology harmonizes the best of each. RLG: I know you focused on the poetry entries. What criteria did you use to select material for the anthology? JC: Again, a balance—topic, theme, and form. There were so many wonderful poems that we didn’t have room to include. That is always a tough choice, and often it came down to representation, context, and inclusion. RLG: In your introduction, you mention the variety of styles, etc. Did you find that a particular style worked better than others? If so, why? JC: I didn’t find that a particular style worked better. And, actually, that was something I wanted to avoid. I tried to include all styles of poetry—some are more experimental in their form and require closer readings. Other poems are more “traditional” and have a clearer narrative. Many styles of poetry are included here from diverse writers. RLG: Are there poems that speak to the purpose of the anthology more than others? JC: All the poems speak to the purpose in some way. There are poems that have a more evident response to the topics—pandemic, social unrest, politics—but there are others that offer a more subtle response to America now—family, belonging, ideals. I think that they all work together to form different threads of the anthology. RLG: The subtitle states poetry and fiction from DC, Maryland, and Virginia, was living currently in the region a requirement to be included? JC: It was a preference, but we also accepted work from writers who had a strong tie to the region, or once lived here. RLG: I believe this is the first anthology you have worked on which is quite different from writing you own work. What did you learn from working on this project? JC: One of the advantages of working on this project was reading all of the wonderful poems. There is such talent in our area and being able to read the work was wonderful. It’s great to celebrate other poets rather than working on my own poems. RLG: As with any literature or artistic work completed, once the creator is done with it and it is “out there” on display, readers/viewers create their own interpretation of the work. As I focused on the poems, I gravitated to those with hope. I’m wondering if you had any expectations for the anthology. JC: My expectation was for readers to hold this book and hear the writers and their inclusive perspectives. I hope that the anthology reaches those who want it and need it, even if they didn’t know it yet. It’s not a book you need to read cover to cover, front to back. You can choose your own path here—a poem, a short story. It’s almost like discovering your own narrative by the pieces you choose and the order you read them. That’s the magic of this book. There is something for every reader. RLG: Thanks, Jona, I celebrate its publication, exactly as you say: there is something for everyone. In reviewing the poems, I was most drawn to poems which touched on reality, hope, despair, and dark humor. Here I’ve included poems that stood out. Sifting America’s Garden After the pronouncement and cries of rage and several calls and transportation of the body. After the body is tagged and bullets extracted and organs discarded and insides further ravaged. After the gloves are tossed sorry for your loss and the coffin is picked and body fitted. After it’s tucked beneath soil and protests expire and whimpers grow faint and aches are suppressed. After the body has settled and ephemerals spring forth and visitors frisk the tomb where stolen Black bodies are planted, a community yearns to breathe again. Copyright © 2021 by NaBeela Washington. Myra Sklarew reminds us of the insidiousness of covid-19. Coronavirus Single strand of RNA wrapped in your protein coast, A halo of spikes ready to bind to an unsuspecting cell. Some say you are not alive! Yet you with your secret partner, Sars-CoV-2 who picks the locks on the protein spikes, and then invites you to enter the cell of your choice, all the while turning off its immune system so you may safely enter, head for its nucleus, create infinite copies of yourself, and calmly disrupt the world! Copyright © 2021 by Myra Sklarew. We must not be too complacent, as Linda Pastan touches on the dangers of what we cannot see. The News of the Day The green earth Is spinning Out of control. The politicians fly Through closed windows, Breaking the glass, And doctors are wringing Their hands, entangled in stethoscopes. Green raindrops are only Dollar bills. The children, wide eyed, Lurk under their desks, And writers complain That their pens have run out of ink. Policemen write their tickets For a thousand abandoned cars. Slow down. Like a bellows, breathe The air in and out. But wait! The air too is dangerous. Copyright © 2021 by Linda Pastan. David Lott gives us a taste of irony. Death Tie There’s a death tie in my closet it’s not meant to be depressing thing it’s just that I’m really bad at tying ties so I leave one already done up dangling from the naked neck of a wooden hanger I never wear a tie to work and rarely get invited to weddings anymore so the tie tends to be for funerals life you could say would mean its undoing Copyright © 2021 by David Lott. Kateema Lee addresses the uncertainty of living in our current society. Lost Epistle If I die suspiciously, please know I didn’t kill myself. If you read My statuses, emails and tweets, Testimonies to tiresome days and anti- Climactic nights, know I knew life Was more tepid creek than volcano. I wouldn’t jog my daily route then dive Into dark water, and if by chance I fell in, I would grow gills. I wouldn’t shape Ropes out of bags or dare any savior To take my life. Melancholy Is not preface to death. Black or brown Is not prologue to demise. My birth Is not precursor to my passing Too soon. If I disappear, look for me Sincerely, [Unnamed] Copyright © 2021 by Kateema Lee. Fran Abrams speaks to the sadness and despair of our current reality. from The Circus Is Here Why pay the price of admission to a circus? If you want to see wild animals bleed, watch the adventures of the uber rich. If you want to see people die, watch the news. Copyright © 2021 by Fran Abrams. Grace Cavalieri reflects on the wonders of Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. from In the Beauty of the City by Grace Cavalieri While it’s true there’s no scale to measure a treasure within a city, this one is kept safe from the aridity of stricken places, and destruction’s deadly face. Instead, there is serenity here to pray against such visions. “Hope’ is the map that extends throughout these Oaks under its house of sun, where intellectual and natural worlds thrive. Just look around at the surface of this earth where we’ve come together, in the radiance and glory of all this flowering which exists in praise of its keepers. Copyright © 2021 by Grace Cavalieri. About the Poetry Editor Jona Colson’s first poetry collection Said Through Glass won the 2018 Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. His translation and interviews can be found in Prairie Schooner, Tupelo Quarterly, and The Writer’s Chronicle. He has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He is an associate professor of ESL at Montgomery College in Maryland and lives in Washington, DC. He is the poetry editor of This Is What America Looks Like: Poetry and Fiction from DC, Maryland, and Virginia. About the Poets NaBeela Washington, an emerging Black poet, is working on her MA in Creative Writing and English at Southern New Hampshire University. She was invited to read her poetry by the Takoma Park Poetry Reading Series and has been published in Juke Joint Magazine Myra Sklarew, professor emerita of American University, served as head of Yaddo Artist’s Community and has published books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, most recently, A Survivor Named Trauma: Holocaust Memory in Lithuania. She studied bacterial viruses and genetics with Max Delbruck and Salvador Luria at Cold Spring Harbor. Linda Pastan’s 14th book of poems, Insomnia, was published in October of 2015 and won the Towson University Prize for Literature. She has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award, and in 2003 she won the Ruth Lilly Prize for lifetime achievement. A Dog Runs Through It was published in May of 2018. David G. Lott is poetry editor of The Sligo Journal, associate editor at Potomac Review, and author of the collection New to Guayama. His work has appeared in Aethlon, Light, 100 Word Story, and Opium, among other places. Kateema Lee, a Washington, DC native, is the author of two chapbooks: Almost Invisible and Musings of a Netflix Binge Viewer. Her forthcoming collection, Transcript of the Unnamed, explores joy, identity, violence, and the “brief, bright lives” of missing and forgotten black women in the District of Columbia. Grace Cavalieri, Maryland’s tenth Poet Laureate, is the author of 26 book and chapbooks of poetry and 20 short-forum and full-length plays. What the Psychic Said is her new publication (Goss Publications, 2020). The previous book of poems Showboat is about 25 years as a Navy wife. Her latest play Quilting the Sun was produced at the Theatre for the New City, NYC in 2019. She founded and produces the Poet and the Poem series for public radio, now from the Library of Congress, and is celebrating 43 years on-air. Gregory Luce Featured in ArLiJo Issue No. 146 Coming into Texas They came in from the northeast, my ancestors, and there were big rivers— Tennessee, Mississippi, Red—to cross, but they did it in daylight, not after dark or hidden in the back of a truck, and they didn’t need to swim. They rode in through the tall grass, over the red dirt flatland, up and down the rolling hills, through luxuriant wildflowers to Grimes and Montgomery Counties. I don’t know if they brought their slaves or acquired them after settling but settle they did and soon spread out, putting their slaves to work on the rich land, propagating the Dunhams and Woods down to my mother’s mother. I came to Texas by way of my mother and Yankee father (descended from Puritans). Both gone now, they left me with mixed blood and mixed feelings about all my forebears. Copyright © 2021 by Gregory Luce. Solstice The sky is low— pressing down toward me as I walk the dog—and almost black, no moon, no stars. Her nose to the ground, Bella doesn’t notice— smells and sounds are amplified. But radiance is everywhere, a network of lights, for finding one’s way around or simply for celebration and beauty, casts a luminous net around the longest night. Copyright © 2021 by Gregory Luce. About the Author Gregory Luce, author of Signs of Small Grace, Drinking Weather, Memory and Desire, Tile, and Riffs & Improvisations (forthcoming from Kelsay Books), has published widely in print and online. He is the 2014 Larry Neal Award winner for adult poetry, given by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In addition to poetry, he writes a monthly column on the arts for Scene4 magazine. He is retired from National Geographic, works as a volunteer writing tutor/mentor for 826DC, and lives in Arlington, VA. Miles David Moore Featured in ArLiJo Issue No. 146 Review of Man on Terrace with Wine (Kelsay Books, 2020). In Man on Terrace with Wine: poems by Miles David Moore we find the poet contemplating the passage of time and all that it entails: from the personal as in The Good Fight to evaluating those in our midst as in Grotesque—“ . . . you who are / no better than us.” (p. 27) A pensive poet debates the reality of the legacy of the average man. In Chain Letter the simplicity of karmic physics is plain: “But, whatever you do, you will not break the chain, / you are incapable of breaking the chain.” (p. 28) Laid out even if one dies, karma remains for those who have gone for here the poet reads the dead’s cards as a warning to those who remain: avoid “that others should not die / cursing you.” (p. 30) A Mother Waits proves that his formal style is his forte: He always was a good boy: sensitive, Stubborn perhaps, not diligent in class, But with an artist’s soul. What I would give To see him aid the priest once more at Mass, (p.59) —reflects a mother’s wishes for her son. A collection filled with subtlety and emotion that emits wisdom. Man on Terrace with Wine reflects on life, with focus on one’s actions in life and the ripple they create. In closing with Drink Up the reader gets advice: “Never let on you really wanted beer; / this is your chance. Drink up, while it’s still here.” (p. 86) Man on Terrace with Wine, Recalling a Line from Herman Hesse What happiness to dream when, drinking wine, You notice beauty that you never see When sober and at work. Late summer vines Glisten with purple fruit. Serenity . . . To live completely and a thousandfold. Where are the vineyards when the way is rough? If, deep inside you, there’s a place to hold A drop of stillness, will it be enough? (57) Will we count the drops of wine? Because with life is there ever enough in our times of uncertainty? Work from Man on Terrace with Wine. Copyright © 2020 by Miles David Moore. Reprinted with permission by the author. About the Author Miles David Moore is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, the latest of which, Man on Terrace with Wine (Kelsay Books, 2020). He is a retired journalist who contributes a monthly film column to the online arts magazine Scene4. From 1994 to 2017, he organized and hosted the IOTA poetry reading series in Arlington, Virginia. From 2002 to 2009, he was a member of the board of directors of The Word Works. Sasha Reiter Featured in ArLiJo Issue No. 146 Fugue Last night, I dreamt that I was painting with Carl Jung. The worst part of spending an afternoon with Carl is that he’ll giggle as he tosses a hand in your hair, breaking your focus, misting Alizarin Crimson against your forehead like pellets of sweat, and when he laughs, from the backmost of his gullet, you can hear his theory on the collective unconscious, as it flicks itself from his tongue, as it sticks to your self-portrait, blotching the thin strokes with a deep tar that begins at the center, running, soaking through the canvas, a cacophony of sounds from inside the hole, stretching outward, somehow resembling the funeral march of the second movement of Beethoven’s Eroica, and, regardless of having never heard it, you know the sound of Midnight Black eating through the opening that punctures the even caress of Titanium White, the painting paralleling your pupil as vibrations shake the eggshell around your brain, slowing the scent of song that becomes heavy as syrup that is too sweet, seeping from the center, reaching a room that ombres pink, not quite human flesh, more like the skin of a fruit, not quite an apple, maybe a plum becoming a peach, where invisible lines converge, where Jung’s collective unconsciousness tells you that something waits in the thick black paint, and in the rest of the room, an orchestra fills the Van Dyke Brown, already fading into maroon, almost chairs; the band is measured in rows of faceless musicians, and Jung stands behind them with confidence, you barely notice him as each performer lifts their instrument, monstrous combinations of string and brass, wet reeds and ivory keys; no one has enough mouths or fingers for their equipment, and you can hear, through the collective, that no one is playing anything sensible on their own, and as you try to focus on one sound at a time, you make out that each member of the orchestra is playing their own minute piece of Beethoven’s symphony, each one playing that piece somewhat incorrectly, and together they make music that is falling apart; each piece amplified by the next, the sounds pulse as your ears bleed, but Jung will hand you a handkerchief for your ears and admit that the collective exists in the quieter parts of a brain, and, only every now and again, tries to speak directly, the way it does regularly for a person this sick, and he’ll point at your portrait. He’ll get serious and say, this is what it sounds like to be defiled by the universe. Copyright © 2021 by Sasha Reiter. Printed by Nueva York Poetry Press, LLC. Reprinted by permission of the author. The Wolf Son, I’m afraid you’re like me. Knees kissing the ground, I asked that you be spared, but every man cut from our cankered cloth is condemned. The water that makes up more than half of your body is boiling, burning the bedlam that howls and kicks, alive in your chest. It will push at your skin, try to break free, don—t let it out through your mouth. Build a cell from the flesh of your heart, keep it docile. Out in the night its headlight eyes will render friends still as deer, swerve and drive them away like I did your mother. Learn to be quiet, ingest and keep it down until only you can see it. When people love you from afar, do what I do— absorb your ambition, consume the commotion in the corners of your mind, devour all devotion, put down your passion, wipe clean your teeth and swallow the wolf. Copyright © 2021 by Sasha Reiter. Printed by Nueva York Poetry Press, LLC. Reprinted by permission of the author. Benched At dinner, I almost knock over my father’s wine and he says that the first thing I did was give him a scare. That I strangled myself with my own umbilical cord. That the doctors said I was born with my eyes open and I didn’t cry. That I was yellow with Jaundice and my head came out misshapen, like a cone. My girlfriend laughs and says I probably looked like a minion, and my mother loves this. She’s in stitches, reaching an arm for my slouched shoulder across the table, not connecting. Now it’s her turn and she says I would sit on the bench with her, begging for stories, asking questions in Spanish. Friends in the sandbox ripped toys from hands and chased each other down slides, on tire swings, passing basketballs that rolled onto the street, where cars whisked the scent of combustion into our sky. Other moms would sit together, sometimes walking over to comment on how I was already two and I should be playing with other children, speaking already. They thought I was babbling and my mother thought their ignorance was priceless. But Mamá, what if it was worse than babbling? If I vomit with words because I am ill with thoughts? If it’s congenital? What if I turned three and was still on the bench? If two decades have passed and I haven’t gotten up? I go to therapy or take pills or both or I eat or smoke or sew my mouth shut with sheer will. What if there are people in my stomach, Mamá? If they climb up my tongue, if I hear them in my head All the time? What if they need to speak, too? If I don’t want them to? My mother doesn’t answer because I am not with her. She chuckles, her fingers finally landing on my deltoid, the warmth of her palm marking the nape of my neck as she squeezes with love. My father listens intently while my girlfriend tells a more recent story. We’re all there, the voices and I, sitting on the bench, where it is safe, away from rolling basketballs and fast cars, from toy nabbers and sizzling aluminum slides or awkward conversations and dinner tables. I wait here, and I open my maw, my mouth oozes with intention and I don’t know how else to cork it. Copyright © 2021 by Sasha Reiter. Printed by Nueva York Poetry Press, LLC. Reprinted by permission of the author. Imposter Palate Give or take 15,000 years in the past, my family may or may not have carried rice on their backs over ice, mud and stone to arrive at bloodless fields to push those little seeds deep beneath the breath of soil to eat their bounty for 15,000 years, give or take. My professor of color referred to me as a student of color once and I wasn’t sure what to do with the title. The first generation in me wanted to tear up, but I knew he was bestowing unto me an honor I couldn’t possibly wear. I knew better. I knew that my great grandfather was smart and lucky enough to leave his life, family behind. To carry the weight of his dead lineage, parents, an anvil on his back, black ink burned into arms no longer capable of reaching out for one another. But not the arms of the man whose name I haven’t earned. He sprinted with ghosts from red Romania to reddish Peru and met a daughter of rice walkers. They mixed blood, fucked up mine, confused my tongues. The Romanians eat potatoes and bread. His granddaughter ran away from home. She carried a nylon blue backpack glutted with clothes and dreams to Jerusalem. There she met another sprinter, fair with locks of gold. Argentineans are the Europeans of Latin America. His people ran too. Why the pair ran together to the land of broken hope, of expectation shrapnel doused in hot Mohican, Japanese blood, soon to be Latin— I cannot be of color with pale skin, colonized, refugeed blood whiter than it is brown, Castellano que me cuesta. I am not of color because 15,000 years of color live in the rice I don’t eat, give or take. Copyright © 2021 by Sasha Reiter. Printed by Nueva York Poetry Press, LLC. Reprinted by permission of the author. About the Author Sasha Reiter, born in New York City, grew up in the Bronx, where as the son of an Argentinian father and a Peruvian mother, he experienced first hand the metaphorical otherness of being both Latino and Jewish. He received his B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from Binghamton University (2018). He spent a semester in London studying English history and culture. He has published two collections of poems in bilingual editions: Choreographed in Uniform Distress/Coreografiados en uniforme zozobra (New York: Artepoética Press, 1st edition, 2018; Lima: Grupo Editorial Amotape, 2nd edition, 2018); and Sensory Overload/Sobrecarga sensorial (New York: Nueva York Poetry Press, 2020). His poetry has been published in English and in translation into Korean and Spanish in Multilingual Anthology: The Americas Poetry Festival of New York 2018; Korean Expatriate Literature (Santa Fe Springs, CA, 2019), and Hawansuyo (New York, 2018). He has translated into English two collections of poems: Dream of Insomnia/Sueño del insomnia, by Isaac Goldemberg (New York: Nueva York Poetry Press, 2021) and The Gaze/La Mirada, by Pedro Granados, published as part of Amerindians/Amerindios (New York: Artepoética Press, 2020). He is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. |
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