February 19, 2010

"Cowboy" Matt Hopewell is the host of the Little "a" Poetry Series, a weekly poetry reading that occurs every Monday night at the Q Cafe, where he also works. He is a poet and musician, and has been published in the "Look! Up in the Sky!" anthology by Sacred Fool's Press and in Worcester Magazine, having taken second place in their poetry contest with his piece "The Ever-Evolving Lima Bean". He has three chapbooks, a forthcoming E.P. (with Lo-Z Records) and a live album, featuring both his music and his poetry. He can usually be found at the Q, serving lattes and trying to make people smile.

Jeff Siegrist was born in the year of our lord 1989. Since then, he has represented Worcester three times at the youth poetry nationals. He can be seen lurking about the area at various open mics, in addition to his television show “Film Squad” on WCCA-TV. He has produced three chapbooks within a year, and spends far too much of his time writing. He’s seen too many bad Dennis Hopper movies to be trusted.

Me and Jimmy Stewart Both Lost Our Innocence At About the Same Time

I remember at age six seeing
Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed answer the phone
together. Jimmy peered into Donna’s eyes, while she
clutched the receiver, which still remained
between them. I felt my hands tremble
and something rather inexplicable go down my spine.

The next day at school, I climbed up
all over the windup clocks and toy trains, as
if I were better than it all. I asked
Mary Hatch, the prettiest girl in the entire first grade,
to take my hand, and we both felt excited
about this new life.

Years later, drunk and cynical,
I saw Jimmy again, forcing Kim Novak into
a dress which had once belonged to Donna. As she
walked out of the darkness and closer
towards the blue light, I found myself fall backwards
into a heap of pornography and lost dreams.

October 16

David Thoreen teaches writing and literature at Assumption College.  As an undergraduate at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, he studied fiction writing with J. F. Powers and Jon Hassler.  He later earned an M.F.A. in creative writing (fiction) at Bowling Green State University and, even later, a Ph.D. in English at SUNY Stony Brook.  Winner of the Worcester County Poetry Association’s annual contest in 2006, Thoreen’s poetry has appeared in journals such as Diner, The Worcester Review, Natural Bridge, Confrontation, The Alembic, Great River Review, and Slate.  

Photo by Tom St. John

The Landscape at Two O’clock

                        … the look in her eye
when…  or the color of the wind
on your cheek—a negotiable
fiction; everything
imagined already—wallpaper
peeling from the wall; a kitchen
in too much sunlight; the child
home from school, believing
everything. There are no dogs
in this story, or cats either, although
there might be a goat, standing
quietly in the next room, eating
the furniture. Coins spread
like lies across the table. Words
line your pockets like spent
kleenex. You still don't know
what to pack for the journey.

November 20, 2009
Jonathan Blake  lives and writes in Fitchburg Ma. He teaches in the English Department at Worcester State College, has published poems, essays and book reviews in a wide variety of journals both big and small and has read his poems throughout New England. Some of his poems have been anthologized in Intimate Kisses and Cadence of Hooves.

TOTEM

Some mornings my wife kneels in the bed
Of flowers close to the stone porch,
Believing he sings to her. Like all music,
His is written into the silence we carry with us.
His dark and weathered face a spirit
Carved into walnut grain.
When our neighbor moved away
She was filled with sorrow.
We found him leaning against
The granite cornerstone, a note left
Pinned to the door.  

“He belongs here with you.”

My friend mistakes his expression
For eternal pain, eyes half closed, lips
Twisted as if just before some terrible
Song of mourning. I explain it’s not the ruin
Of the soul he sees, not among the stargazers
And the wild mint, the tulips and the iris;
I tell him my wife believes a different story,
One older than the myth of our exile;
She says each garden is passage
Into paradise, this face – reminder
Of our rapture.

Bill O'Connell  makes his living as a social worker and teacher in Western Massachusetts . Poems have appeared or will appear in The Sun, Poetry East, Colorado Review and many other publications. A chapbook, On The Map To Your Life, is available from the author at  billoconnell@rocketmail.com.