SORBONNE
A café of students
delivered from lectures,
the February tourists
searching for Richelieu's tomb.
The infectious laughter of a girl
sitting by the window,
a genuine smile
in a room
busy with speech,
the tested leaves
as books lean on stained tables.
Yellow lights,
your shadow
fragrant before me,
the promise like a corner
yet to be turned.
--Byron Beynon
The Shirt
It hung on a hook on my closet door.
Soft plaid flannel,
blues and grays,
softer with each wash.
After each workday
I took off my daily armor
and slipped my arms into sleeves
that hung inches past my hands.
I fastened buttons over bare breasts
and tied the hem around my hips.
I held it to my face, breathed
and thought I could smell your scent,
lingering after dozens of washings--
the musk of masculinity--
an essence of strong sinews,
curly chest hairs
and work-worn hands.
I wore the shirt to bed
and drifted into sleep,
knowing I was not alone.
The memory of you clung to me--
the softness of unspoken intimacies,
the warmth of domestic familiarity.
In slumber, forgetting
--Anne Rettenberg
Psychotherapist’s Lament
I asked you to tell your story.
But you lied;
you closed the door on me.
Betrayed in younger years,
your pain never faded.
It petrified, into a rock wall
high and sheer.
I can turn the key slowly,
unlocking the mystery
of how old wounds still sting, but
it’s no quick release from misery.
You found relief
in an inanimate remedy.
Or was it the chance of death you took
that entranced you,
a needle roulette, not Russian,
but just as deadly?
I cried
when I heard you had died
in your ecstatic reverie.
And the crimes that had been
perpetrated against you
were upgraded by Fate
from neglect to homicide.
--Anne Rettenberg
15
morning is calling
the light wan as tallow
you strut around your room to
the marvel of your beauty the perkiness
of old breasts thrills you; your 15-year-old
self wouldn’t have guessed when all the boys shouted—
flat, then kissed you anyway. So pretty you are – the cream
of your skin; you are gorgeous as café con leche and the light
knows it. You sashay into raindrops where soaked men in flocks follow
your breasts are rebotan one says oh mama what you must’ve been at 15
you remember your mother said one day you’d be happy I remember
--Nanette Rayman Rivera
A Fabric So Sheer
A fabric so sheer that thoughts show through;
the light was too flimsy for morning to begin.
Do I see her again in this place we knew?
Some parts remain: The winks from you,
that blue silk blouse with the waist tucked in--
a fabric so sheer that thoughts show through.
When summer’s heat slouched in our room
my naked skin wore the pattern of sin.
Do I see her again in this place we knew?
Our time back then was a fact but not true.
She said she’d come back and fools bet to win.
A fabric so sheer that thoughts show through.
A phrase from a song, the scent of perfume;
she touched my arm and I trembled within.
Do I see her again in this place we knew?
Those youthful nights of our rendezvous--
they steep like the tea of some exotic Djin.
A fabric so sheer that thoughts show through.
Do I see her again in this place we knew?
--Jerry Kraft
About the poets in this issue:
Byron Beynon is a Welsh poet who lives in Swansea, Wales. His work has appeared widely in publications around the world -- Quadrant (Australia); Landfall (New Zealand); Literary Horizon (Romania); The French Literary Review; Poetry Salzburg Review; Agenda; Negative Capability (USA); Istanbul Literary Review, The Independent -- and won awards in several competitions. He has had five collections of poetry; the most recent is Nocturne in Blue (Lapwing Publications 2009). For more information visit his profile at the Welsh Academy: http://www.academi.org/list-of-writers/i/129541/
Anne Rettenberg is the Editor of Eat a Peach: A Poetry Journal and a psychotherapist.
Nanette Rayman Rivera’s new memoir is out on Amazon. to live on the wind is published by Scattered Light Publications. She is the author of poetry collection: Project: Butterflies by Foothills Publishing and a chapbook, alegrias, by Lopside Press. She is the first winner of the Glass Woman Prize for memoir and her poem Shoes was published in Best of the Net 2007. She has also been published in The Worcester Review, Oranges & Sardines, MiPOesias, Pebble Lake Review, Carve Magazine, Stirring's Steamiest Six, Pedestal, Wheelhouse, The Berkeley Fiction Review, Barnwood, Snow Monkey, Three Candles, Sein Und Werden, Carousel, decomp, ditch, Prick of the Spindle, The Wilderness House Literary Review, Dragonfire, blossombones, Barnwood, Dirty Napkin, Arsenic Lobster, Magnolia, unmoveable feast, Thirteen Myna Birds, Hobble Creek Review, Green Silk – Best of Issue, Gold Wake Press, Whistling Shade and was Featured Poet in Up the Staircase. She is listed in IMBD and Turner Classic Movies.
Jerry Kraft is a playwright, poet and theatre critic. His poetry has been published in various literary journals, and he has published two volumes of poetry, “Rapids” in 2003 and “You Dropped Your Bible and I Saw Your Thong: Poems from the best of Craigslist,” in 2009. He lives with his family in Port Angeles, Washington.