 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. |
Michael Larrain Featured in ArLiJo Issue No. 71 Sweeter Still Not even apples are as sweet as water in the middle of the night after falling asleep after making love after all had seemed lost the night before Now the sight of you turning in the tangled moonlit linens like some other, older form that water has descended from is sweeter still your breasts swimming out of your body and breaking into purest elsewhere your muscles moving as though music were swelling under your skin I’m warm in our home beside my heart’s companion but I can hardly wait to fall back to sleep and wake in the morning and hold you Copyright © 2014 by Michael Larrain. only early every always Only when. Only when you come walking toward me down the beach, silver spurs jingling softly on your bare feet, will I be able to steer by the first few stars, and by the salt adhering to your warm brown skin. Wait there for a moment, would you? As soon as I reach you, my arms will know what to do. Now all we can see or touch or say is promise pure and simple. Whatever you feel is known to the air around us. The golden syllables along your spine will welcome me home. How good to have hands. Let me brush the stars off your body and the sand out of the sky. Only then. It's early, so very early, when, lovingly, we quarrel with birds because we cannot distinguish treetops from sleep. Did the world decide us or we decide the world? Now the apples can carry their handfuls of snow across the river without fear of pursuit. May I twirl you in the water while we lie here, may I mean for once early what I'm doing? May I early your eyelids and your neck? No one's early been this happy before. First light is always the last to know. Sleep would take you back and be glad of your company. But let's just be happy and thoughtless and silly instead, because, after all, it's still so very early here upon the newborn earth. Every day every time every chance every danger every lover every dance every kiss a final notice every call you'd rather not take every call you'd rather not make every single drink every question in the dead of night every breakfast every berry every girl delivered from worry every time you have to cut the blue wire every name every story every stone every letter of the unreadable alphabet drawn upon the sky etched into your face and body every pardon granted every kindness recalled Always our fingertips ask the shape of the ever-changing world never for an answer but always to prepare for the tumblers falling into place just this once the messiah of timing just in case Copyright © 2014 by Michael Larrain. Hope Chest The dreams of the nude figurehead steer the ship which accounts for the comings and goings of the velvet rope Nights can be reconstructed from the insides of dresses The tape threaded in you turns at the speed of the earth pulling its rivers through space My blood sleeps in the fine blond hair of your thighs I can hear the furniture yearning for lemon oil None of my crimes is imaginable Copyright © 2014 by Michael Larrain. Biography: Michael Larrain hails from Los Angeles. He is the author of four collections of poems: The Promises Kept in Sleep, Just One Drink for the Diamond Cutter and For One Moment There Was No Queen, and How It All Came True: Poems for My Daughter. Rainy Day Women Press of Willits, CA, has released a CD of his reading of his selected love poems called Lipstick: A Catalogue for Continuous Undressing. His novels are South of The North Star, Movies on the Sails, and As the Case May Be. His children's storybooks are The Girl With the Loom In Her Room, Heaven & Earth, Homer the Hobo & Ulysses the Goat and Wilder & Wilder Still. He lives in Sonoma County (California) with his wife and eight year old daughter. Miles David Moore Featured on ArLiJo Issue No. 71 Hopper: Cape Cod Evening (at the National Gallery of Art, Washington) Only the dog is alive, standing alertly in the brown marsh grass, ears and nose quivering, pointed toward the distance. The dog is indifferent to the squatting man. The grudging stretched-out hand is bereft of treats or anything a waxwork couldn’t give. The cross-armed woman slumps against the window, straitjacketed in her hard teal dress, wishing the man, the dog, the world were dead. The blue spruce forest crowds against the house. The closest tree lifts a branch against the clapboard, tasting it, judging if it’s time to move. Copyright © 2014 by Miles David Moore. Ships and Barges Some wreck themselves on the rocks or, more perversely, against each other, drowning all that swims or flies in the smothering darkness of their poison. Some, with damn-the-torpedoes courage, sail into Force Five hurricanes, and all that survives is synecdoche of flotsam, jetsam, caps and shoes. Some dock at home in a hero’s flourish of flags and trumpets, the people cheering the brigands who will rob them blind in the flash-toothed sale of cargo holds engorged with zircons and mica. Then there are the quiet ones, weighted with coal and bread and wood till their gunwales are nearly flush with the waves. In daylight, their rust spots fester; at night, their lights are faint even to those who would die without them. Copyright © by Miles David Moore. Previously published in Passager. A Vandalized Churchyard The headstones that withstood A thousand storms and snows Slant broken in the mud Like fallen dominoes. And that’s the way it goes. Why should we make a fuss About some shattered stone? To be anonymous, Unheeded and alone Is the one truth we’ve known, So do the dead deserve The dignity of name? Time throws all life a curve; It’s just a children’s game, From age to age the same. Children must have play Before they go to bed. They run an ancient way— Where those now ashes led— To unname all the dead. Copyright © by Miles David Moore. Previously published in Measure. Biography: Miles David Moore is founder and host of the IOTA poetry reading series in Arlington, VA. His books of poetry are The Bears of Paris (Word Works, 1995); Buddha Isn’t Laughing (Argonne House Press, 1999); and Rollercoaster (Word Works, 2004). |
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