 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 Associate Editor, Sarah Fannon ArLiJo has reverted to a publication by invitation only. 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 published by Gival Press. |
Patricia Garfinkel Featured on ArLiJo Issue No. 64 Iceberg You conceal most of your form in the deep leaving us to imagine your full beauty like a tall, elegant woman hidden in soft folds of white muslin from head to toe, a masquerade of force. Ice sheets, on the other hand, conquer and imprison even mountains till only a bud of summit escapes their stranglehold. The landscape is hostage to their stealth cover, giving up and giving in. But I sing the song of the iceberg, its mystery and somber pose, statuesque as it guards the sea. Copyright © 2014 by Patricia Garfinkel. Killer By Nature Nominated for the 2014 Pushcart Prize Frost-flaked air stings our eyes, freezes in our nostrils here at the edge of Antarctica’s sea ice. Five of us stand transfixed by dark water churning with a pod of killer whales so close we can touch them. They arch their backs out of the froth to rise in graceful curves, then crash in unison back to the sea. A scolding shout pulls us to attention. —Stand back! They see your shadow and will grab you for their next meal. This is not a damned zoo.— But it is hard to pull away from death. Copyright © 2014 by Patricia Garfinkel. Mount Erebus, Antarctica She is hot and she is frigid, a temptress clothed in delicate ice falls while steam rises through her body. What man would not pay high to climb her limbs and bury his face in the mist pulsing from her center. Aloof and beckoning, she taunts his dreams. Copyright © 2014 by Patricia Garfinkel. Biography: Patricia Garfinkel, a New Yorker by birth, has been a school teacher and most recently retired from the National Science Foundation where she worked as a science policy analyst and speechwriter for four consecutive directors and deputy directors for several years prior to working at the House of Representatives, also as a speech writer. Many years before she studied with poet Henry Taylor for three years. She has written three books of poetry. Making the Skeleton Dance, (George Braziller, Inc.), is her third book of poetry. Two previous poetry books were published by literary presses. She won a Poetry-in-Public -Places award for New York State, a Moving Words Award for Poetry on the DC Metro. She gave the first-ever poetry reading at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. She was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts as well as President of Washington Writers Publishing House from 1994-1996. She currently resides in Arlington, Virginia Lyn Lifshin Featured on ArLiJo Issue No. 64 Lemon Wind all day nobody wanted to talk the sleeping bags were still wet from the storm in Cholla Vista Nothing went right. But later the wood we burned had a sweet unfamiliar smell and all night we could taste lemons in the wind Copyright © 2014 by Lyn Lifshin. In Spite of His Dangling Pronoun He was really her favorite student, dark and just back from the army with hot olive eyes, telling her of bars and the first time he got a piece of ass in Greece or was it Italy and drunk on some strange wine and she thought in spite of his dangling pronoun (being twenty four and never screwed but in her soft nougat thighs) that he would be a lovely experience. So she shaved her legs up high and when he came talking of foot notes she locked him tight in her snug black file cabinet where she fed him twice a day and hardly anyone noticed how they lived among bluebooks in the windowless office rarely coming up for sun or the change in his pronoun. Or the rusty creaking chair or that many years later they were still going to town in novels she never had time to finish Copyright © 2014 by Lyn Lifshin. Montmartre Haven’t you wanted, sometimes, to walk into some painting, start a new life? The quiet blues of Monet would soothe but I don’t know how long I’d want to stay there. Today I’m in the mood for something more lively, say Lautrec’s Demimonde. I want that glitter, heavy sequin nights. You take the yellow sunshine. I want the club scene that takes you out all night. Come on, wouldn’t you, just for an evening or two? Gaslights and absinthe, even the queasy night after dawn. Wouldn’t you like to walk into Montmartre where everything you did or imagined doing was de rigeur, pre-AIDS with the drinkers and artists and whores? Don’t be so P.C., so righteous you’d tell me you haven’t imagined this? Give me the Circus Fernando, streets where getting stoned was easy and dancing girls kick high. It’s just the other side of the canvas, the thug life, a little lust. It was good enough for Van Gogh and Lautrec, Picasso. Can’t you hear Satie on the piano? You won’t be able to miss Toulouse, bulbous lips, drool. Could you turn down a night where glee and strangeness is wide open? Think of Bob Dylan leaving Hibbing. A little decadence can’t hurt. I want the swirl of cloth under changing colored lights, nothing square, nothing safe, want to can can thru Paris, parting animal nights, knees you can’t wait to taste flashing Copyright © 2014 by Lyn Lifshin. Biography: Lyn Lifshin has published more than 130 books and chapbooks and edited 4 anthologies of women writers. Her work has appeared in most literary and poetry magazines. She has been included in virtually every major anthology. She has given more than 700 readings across U.S.A and has been Poet in Residence at Rochester, Antioch and Colorado Mountain College. Winner of the Jack Kerouac Award for her book Kiss The Skin Off, Lyn is the subject of the documentary film, just re-released by Lyn Lifshin: Made of Glass. |
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