 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. |
John J. Brugaletta Featured on ArLiJo Issue No. 74 Snapshots It’s after they die that relatives send around their pictures, the dead once more beautiful and smiling, not depressed, not argumentative, not rotting in a hole. They probably have good motives, or used to— the wish that we'll remember them at their best, but all it does is add to our discomfort at losing such impossibly perfect people. Maybe that’s why we keep them in a drawer for the rest of our lives. Copyright © 2015 by John J. Brugaletta. Opposing Hands See how like a breath she brushes off the skull of soil and sand. Look, it’s born again now at these expert hands that love this shell of life—enough to bear the heat or knifing cold, the insects and the thugs. See there the dome is missing a large part. No trepanning, this. It gapes too wide. The hand that opened this released a life and not the aching that possessed his head— a life of data now, imagined life. Copyright © 2015 by John J. Brugaletta. Biography: John J. Brugaletta has published two book-length collections of poetry, The Tongue Angles, and With My Head Rising Out of the Water. His poems have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Image, Blue Unicorn, Relief, The Random House Treasury of Light Verse and other publications. He previously edited and published South Coast Poetry Journal through California State University, Fullerton's English Department. Retired from CSUF, he now lives on the far northern coast of California. Heidi Hermanson Featured on ArLiJo Issue No. 74 The Carrying Over This is a ferry to another life, beams stuck on high, gaze unwavering towards the future. What seems like a dilapidated wreck of rotten planks is bejeweled inside, encrusted with glory, an open letter to the ocean. There are no personal trainers here, no leather-clad slave drivers brandishing whips, just softly-rounded women who resemble your dear, blue- haired grandmother long gone. They wear fragrant white face powder and clunky jewelry. They cluck softly, smile knowingly, and nod approvingly at the inanest of your remarks. It is not a matter of boarding or not boarding. The pull is strong, the rope the sail rides on, rippling. The launch is now. See how the ocean clears a path before you! The lime and lapis sea-foam dream sparkles as you ride out the storm. You are safe below. There is no fear for time, for the clocks have long since been thrown overboard, along with your checkbook, spare glasses, and mortgage. Copyright © 2015 by Heidi Hermanson. Days Lost In spite of the allergies I tested negative for, the heat, the humidity, the mosquitos, in spite of the lost ones, the lost jewelery, the lost poetry, the children that were in my arms one day and walking out the next— In spite of muddy shoes on my heart's just waxed-floor (my garbage can heart, you walked away like a grinning trash man with a pit-bull smile) In spite of heart aches, body aches that feel like jays screaming... In spit of cold stares, my darling, your face betrays the reluctant wonderment of the world as you sashay through August heat with the ease of water-skiing—perfect, a day with no obligations, a gazelle in someone else's tomato patch, a shummering white veil, a white mosquito veil over your small heart. Copyright © 2015 by Heidi Hermanson. First they walk on your feet—then they walk on your heart my mother-in-law intones, but this one only makes my heart softer and more tender—maybe in preparation for her to walk on it. Her ice blue eyes fix themselves intently on me as if to memorize each wrinkle, each one a road map. Her smile transcends all time. The future is not promised, but she is a seal and a testament to it, a mile marker that flicks out quick as a lit cigarette burning down to the very end I hold my niece, think of her future, She’s as tart as an unripe pear. Her skin is as soft as the inside of my heart. Her specialty: softening hearts. Time races on. Each move, our hands, our eyes, describes a burden, the baggage we carry. We drag it through the snow, leaving makes on the ground, scars. Copyright © 2015 by Heidi Hermanson. Biography: Heidi Hermanson has been published in Midwest Quarterly and Hiram Poetry Review. She organized the first Poets’ Chautauqua at the State Fair and there released her first chapbook, Midwest Hotel. Heidi has organized and directed four ekphrastic shows which she describes as a marriage between visual art and poetry. In 2010 she won the Omaha Public Library’s annual poetry contest and performed her winning work accompanied by Silver Roots, a New York-based violin and flute duo. She has read at the John R Milton Conference in Vermillion, SD, at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City, at Tunes in the Town Square (which features poetry at the band’s break) in Ralston, Nebraska, on the Kerry Pedestrian Bridge over the Missouri, and at the Roebuck Pub in England. In her spare time she hopes to open a library of maps to towns that do not exist and learn the dialects of the seven-year cicada. She holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Changming Yuan Featured on ArLiJo Issue No. 74 iHooyeau supposing Darwin was right it did take as long as one million years before apes became what we are, gradually and passively, with the help of our environment however, with our own intelligence and technology, we are going to evolve into iHooyeaus suddenly and actively, in a matter of just one generation or two, a new species that will consume lunar energy instead of sun-based foods each living in a unique virtual reality, where multiplication is achieved sexlessly via logic rather than through love, where each individual lifetime is expended within a tiny chip so, are you happy to be the last humans or the earliest iHooyeaus? Copyright © 2015 by Changming Yuan. Banyan Instead of reaching deep Into the ground, you hung all your roots On your twigs in the wild open, trying To absorb both air and light directly As well as darkness and cold Ready to connect to soil and water Growing from a single tree into a huge forest That’s your most deeply-rooted secret The secret about growth Copyright © 2015 by Changming Yuan. Biography: Yuan Changming, an 8-time Pushcart nominee, is probably the world's most widely published poetry author who speaks Mandarin but writes in English. Tutoring and co-editing Poetry Pacific (with Allen Qing Yuan) in Vancouver, Canada, Yuan has poetry appearing in 989 literary publications in 31 countries, including Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Cincinnati Review and Threepenny Review. |
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