 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. 145 The anesthetists discuss astronomy The anesthetists discuss astronomy elevating in the lift while patients arrive in taxis accompanied or not by family. The universe consists of 100 billion galaxies. If there are sentient civilizations on just a millionth of those planets we are far from alone. Outside: cold rain, December. A sick person sitting in the waiting room among frayed magazines with his threadbare life has only one single prayer. The poem was previously published in La raíz invertida / la Revista Latinoamericana de Poesía July 2020. Copyright © 2020 by Niels Hav. Translation by P. K. Brask. Axiom False pride collapses sooner or later. As if reality in its innermost structure were governed by reason. Despots and empires grind to an end; brutal murderers and violent political systems last for only a time, then the regime falls apart from the inside. The dictator’s name disappears into the great forgetting— faster than the representatives of goodness whom the heart remembers. New incarnations of human evil appear— brutality and arrogance mate happily with our own desire for a jackpot. But the new ones and their servile fellow-travelers will also disappear when their time comes. Trust that. Invincible is the marrow which every morning lifts us all out of sleep each with our own flopping catch of joy and hope. The poem was previously published in the Portuguese translation Alma danca em seu berco (Editora Penalux, Brazil 2018). Copyright © 2018 by Niels Hav. Translation by P. K. Brask and Patrick Friesen. About the Author Niels Hav is a Danish poet and short story writer with awards from The Danish Arts Council. He is the author of seven collections of poetry and three books of short fiction. His books have been translated into many languages including English, Arabic, Turkish, Dutch, Farsi, Serbian, Kurdish, and Portuguese. His second English poetry collection, We Are Here, was published by Book Thug in Toronto; his poems and stories have been published in a large number of magazines and newspapers in different countries of the world, including The Literary Review, Ecotone, Acumen, Exile, The Los Angeles Review, Absinthe: New European Writing, Shearsman and PRISM International. He has travelled widely and participated in numerous international poetry events in Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America. He has frequently been interviewed by the media. Niels Hav was raised on a farm in western Denmark; today he resides in the most colourful and multi-ethnic part of the capital, Copenhagen. His most recent book, Moments of Happiness was published by Det Poetiske Bureaus Forlag in 2020. Holly Karapetkova Featured in ArLiJo Issue No. 145 Southern Gothic Sometimes the moss in a tree is just moss. Sometimes it is a body swinging from a rope. How you tell the difference is by getting close enough to see, by waiting for the sun to rise high enough to clear off the shadows stuck to your own feet. The boy was just a boy, not a big-eyed monster. The river was cold and the wind colder. This is how it works: I hit you and you scream. This is how it plays out: I wring you like a dishcloth and the truth gushes forth— the only truth that will make it out of here alive. Previously published in Poet Lore (111.1-2, Spring Summer 2016). Copyright © 2016 by Holly Karapetkova. Breakfast of Champions I am awakened each morning by a million pixels: the light of my own face, selfie smiling on my smartphone. I breathe in the air of 14.5 planets, breathe out 20 metric tons of carbon before I even brush my teeth. My gold medal is bigger than yours and it’s got nothing to do with luck; it&rsquos all pluck and hard work and tax breaks targeted to stimulate the economy, this stamina I acquired by pushing my checkbook from one bank to the next in search of lower interest rates. They fall like stars into my hat and thanks to my elite education I’ve learned to stuff them in my pockets, thousands of points of light, to touch them until they respond with the image I want to see. They shine every morning, only for me. Previously published in The Crab Orchard Review (233, 2019). Copyright © 2019 by Holly Karapetkova. Social Studies In 5th grade we learned that slavery ended in 1865: Thirteenth Amendment (turn the page) Indian Removal Act in 1830 Trail of Tears 1838-1839 meant for their own protection (sic) (end of chapter) This is what makes us social these studies a long list of presidents (cotton plantation on this very playground) wars whose dates we memorize treaties and purchases (just the facts) the Mason Dixon Line thickened on the map reservations shaded blue as sky (Cherokee genocide just north of here) a fugitive pencil crossing (erase) Copyright © 2021 by Holly Karapetkova. Big Hair We all wanted it, endured hours in the salon chair: hair wrapped around hard plastic rollers, chemicals dripping on our scalps. Then each morning the curling iron, clouds of chlorofluoro-carbons, hair spray coating every surface of the bathroom. We didn’t know (didn’t ask) that the black girls were doing the same thing in the opposite direction, relaxers and straightening irons to pull out the curls they didn’t want, get something approaching the texture of white hair. In the yearbook we’re all smiling, white girls with bangs puffed like carnations, black girls with hair sculpted into orchids, our pictures alphabetical, interspersed so you’d think we were friends who could turn to one another in homeroom one morning and complain about the rain ruining 45 minutes of hair preparation. But we didn’t. We suffered at separate ends of the yard, monkey bars and playground dust rising between, a distance none of us could imagine crossing. Previously published in North American Review (300.2, Spring 2015). Copyright © 2015 by Holly Karapetkova. Neighborhood Games They arrived on long yellow buses from neighborhoods across town, the long list repeated daily in homeroom: Schwanna, Demont, Tayara, Valencia names we never used. They sat at their own lunch table, formed their own game of tag at recess. We were German-Polish-Norwegian-Italian- Scottish-British-white, the unwritten rules we’d already learned by heart. At home we ran the neighborhood, played capture the flag, tackle football, snowball wars, ally ally in come free. A wilderness grew behind our houses, acres and acres untamed. We made a secret hideout, dug a hole that could hold several of us at a time. I remember the view from inside, earth reaching to my shoulders, a hole so deep we had to climb down in it to keep digging. Copyright © 2021 by Holly Karapetkova. About the Author Holly Karapetkova is the current Poet Laureate of Arlington County. Her poetry, prose, and translations have appeared recently in The Southern Review, Blackbird, Poetry Northwest, and many other places. She’s the author of two books of poetry, Towline and Words We Might One Day Say. She teaches at Marymount University. Ron Singer Featured in ArLiJo Issue No. 145 Teachable Moments A father teaching his son to fish shows him how to cast, then reel in. “So far, we’ve caught seventeen fish,” he jokes to someone who joins them, pointing toward an empty bin. Taking the bait, the newcomer looks in. This is on the East River, in Manhattan. The two rods rest upon a wooden rail. When a second boy arrives, a rod-less friend, the first one lends his to him, tells the joke, and explains the drill. Ignoring the bin, Boy-Two casts, reels in. Fishing teaches patience (as does Latin). It also teaches strategy. (Or is it tactics?) So does basketball (teach strategy and tactics). Aggression, as well, it teaches (basketball). Life, in sum, is full of lessons, some teachable, some passed, pell-mell, from father to son. Copyright © 2021 by Ron Singer. The Old Lease on Life No Condition Permanent — A proverb seen on Nigerian buses, mammy wagons and trucks. -1- In Native America, no one owned land. People exercised life tenure, or freehold. Only the Great Spirit’s lease was perpetual. The rest of us—humanity—rented. This distinction may be existential. For our apartment, e.g., which we own, we pay monthly maintenance, i.e., rent. The distinction extends to the dental: Addressing a tooth-resorption problem, “Normal for your age,” the dentist explains. “Root canal is your Number-One option.” In a sense, then, my teeth are a rental. Picture renting your teeth, the when and the how! “Sign on the line, sir! You can wear them now!” -2- The other morning, we replaced a toilet seat. The old one looked new, but its hinges were bent. Toilet seats seem less like objects you keep than all the aforementioned, which you rent. That we rent, not own, is fundamental. One by one, our body cells are replaced. In that sense, we gradually lose face, not to mention fascia, glands and follicles. Toilet seats, co-ops, teeth, body cells, land, all things that consciousness can understand . . . But since the brain, itself, is made up of cells, our sense, in a sense, turns out to be a rental. Life, come to think of it, may have a lease. But to claim that you own it (your life)? Please! Copyright © 2021 by Ron Singer. About the Author Ron Singer, author of Look to Mountains, Look to Sea (River Otter Press, 2013), a collection of Maine poems, a Pushcart nomination and was named Best Chapbook by The Aurorean, a Maine poetry magazine. Singer has also published hundreds of single poems in venues ranging from local newspapers to international journals. His three most recent books focus on aging. These are The Promised End and Gravy (Unsolicited Press, 2019 & 2020); and Weld Tales, Short, Long & Tall (Akorin Books, 2020). The Real Presence will be published in 2021 by Adelaide Books; it’s a historical novel centering around Nigeria’s Biafra War (1967-70). Visit: www.ronsinger.net |
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