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Pour Vida Issue #7

(Summer 2015)

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Table of Contents

William Wolak………………………………………………...."7 Sleepless Nights" (cover) Jon Gilcrest………………………………………………“There Is A Weight Today” p.3-4 Gerard Sarnat….."Caityln Gender" and "Gotta Court Bukowski's Muse" p.5-6 Christina Ledesma……………………………………..….."Waiting for My Diego" p.7-8 Raquel Reyes-Lopez……….."Waiting for a Reply" and "I Got May Sads" p.9-10 Harmony Ries Reger…………………………………..…. “Earning Empathy” p.11-12 Afshani Shafi……………………………………………………………...."Thigh-Gap" p.13-15 Steven Mead……………………………………………………………………………"Power" p.16 Marshall Esco…………………………………………………………………….…"Sunday" p.17 Carl Boon…………………………………………………………………….…"Amsterdam" p.18 Justo Yanez…………….“La Poesía”, “¿Dónde está papá?”, and “Ariel” p.19-22

For any inquiries or if you wish to contribute to Pour Vida, feel free to contact us at: pourvidazine@gmail.com

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“There Is A Weight Today” by Jonathan Gilcrest

I hear her name in wind chimes, hawk cries, wheel noise on the

freeway. It all happens over and over. Centrifuge. Thoughts being crushed into thoughts until it's all one sickening blur. It’s always going to be her. I want to puke. Run until I throw up my heart. Pick flowers. Crush them in my teeth.

"When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you." "Don't say things like to me. You are always saying such negative

things, and it makes me not want to talk with you." "What else can I say? What else is there to say?" "I don't know, Jon." And I'm blind, now - I'm deserving of nothing and want it all - can't

see anything but my reflection. And my phone rings rings rings rings rings... And my speaker sings sings sings sings sings... And everyone in the Uber shouts who we aren't fucking with...

"Cause we're all defined by what we hate." "Well I'm not, and I don't want to be that way! I like things. I like a lot

of things." "You hate things, too. You hate me." "I don't want to talk about it anymore." And I say, "Bitch," and regret it for the rest of my life. Acceptance comes like nails to the face, and I realize I will never say

the words I love you to her again. It is all wrapped in blankets of shame, sweating cozy and cursing introductions onto breezy sunny days. I had used every manipulative trick I knew and flung hate at her with gasping desperation that begged, “Love me. Please please please love me. I Love you, I Love you, I Love you, you stupid fucking bitch.

I'll do anything for you. I'll die, I don't care. Won't you please hold my hand?”

"I am a purveyor of fine burned bridges." "Why would you want something unwalkable between us?" And she was right. Who would buy such a thing?

By the time the cop pulled us over, I was already sober. Rob slowly pulled his hand out of my pants in the shadows of the spotlight. “My fucking headlight is out.”

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He nodded, bored, maybe frustrated, who drives around with only one headlight? Shit, anyone who is blinding you with their brights on a well lit street.

The cop told us the same. Fix it ticket. “But first, is there alcohol in that flask?” “No.” It wasn’t a lie. “Alright. You can prove the correction at any highway patrol

station.” “Now where were we?” By the time we were naked I felt torn open and dried out. Why were you in my bed? You aren’t her. And somehow I spent the first half of my next day thinking about

her while I held your hand. Poor fucker. You had no idea whose shadow you love in.

I see dead people. Everywhere. I can imagine their eyes once

luminous, arcing eutectic love from person to person. Their ears reaping voices and stories, their hands clenching hands... finding god in the little things… veins coloring their skin… laughter.

And yet, somehow, this has all been rinsed away or was dropped like change and now they sit -- I sit -- facing windows, watching cars, immersed in pools of self. Cold self. Discontent self. Lonely self. Hated self. Memories filling up all around, soaking my clothes like greasy sweat... and suddenly I can't see anyone anymore. There is only my reflection and Nemesis. Reflection and Nemesis. Reflection and Nemesis. Reflection and Nemesis.

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“Caitlyn Gender” by Gerard Sarnat

“Don’t do daily prayers like a bird pecking, moving its head up and down. Prayer is an egg. Hatch out the total helplessness inside.” -- Prayer Is An Egg, Rumi

At war with the germ of true self, Olympian Jenner was a chiliastic Wheaties box decathlete whose top shelf drag racing suave slow-burned gender combat. Gradually his closeted companion began not playing hide-and-seek with others but rather egged inside on to let herself be seen. Bruce’s cool chromos shell disappeared from Hollywood lot commissaries to line up anonymously at a down-to-earth organic range-free omelet food truck while filming the hard-boiled tenaciously unfair, Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Malibu’s once sheen throw-weight composure became broken yolk drawing off unwanted secretions’ secret dread. Any day out’s a teachable moment, morphed into Vanity Fair consecrated Mother Nature/ Mother Courage clichés till Caitlyn, the lady she is,

beat me gently in celebrity round-robin tennis doubles.

“Gotta court Bukowski’s muse” by Gerard Sarnat

At least for surly lefties Each & every barfly verse begins equal but matures at a somewhat different rate like US vs. Russian tennis my early blueprint gently overexplains then impromptu shifts toward surfing mild mischief mixed metaphors that hang ten trickling up backdoor Betty

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as the price of admission for feeding one McMansion whose youngest’s occupant is kept in a broom closet producing curses rhyming w/ watermelon or Guatemala after which the stepkid’s boogie board’s released from its grubby hearse into San Pedro Harbor under recognizance plus chains until I need more of her stuff to publish.

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“Waiting for My Diego” by Christina Ledesma

Waiting for my Diego, so he can paint me on his wall. So we can dance barefoot. With no cares, in the dirt, under the stars. Waiting for my Diego, so I can paint him with my words. Tell our story, as we paint our world. Full of color, and vibrant hues. He'll paint my eyes with flecks of gold. Cause he will look, deep enough to know. And paint my skin brown, not white, so you can see my roots.

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Waiting for my Diego, but not the cheating kind. If he's not my muse I won't waste my time. Waiting for my Diego, a man who knows himself. A man who knows self-love, knows true wealth. Waiting for my Diego, a man who will let me be me. He will understand, that freedom, it isn't free. And accept me for who I am, even when I fall. Waiting for my Diego, a man who's not afraid. Who won't look to far into the future, for the things he can't see. He doesn't live in the past, and he stays stress free. Who will live in the moment, in the stillness of our frame. Painting are love together, for the whole world to see. *This ekphrastic poem was inspired by the painting the La Casa Azul, by artist Alejandro Hernandez Reyes from Mexico City.

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“Waiting for a Reply” by Raquel Reyes-Lopez

Mother cold air haunts me

with the heavy silence it brings, and night is my sin.

It feels like God is trying to throw out pieces of my tongue, eyes, and thighs

into the sea. I don’t know why. I’m not dead yet.

I’m scared of all this silence.

Not even crickets sing for me. Mother this silence feels like it’s exhuming all of our dead ancestors. I don’t know who

to talk to.

It feels like the moon is ignoring me and that’s the saddest part

being lost in all her light is such a slap to the face.

Especially when you’re not here, and I honestly don’t know where to look anymore, because even the heavens have ripped away

all traces of you.

“I Got May Sads” by Raquel Reyes-Lopez

When lights lull

themselves over a dark Pico Rivera

I get lonely.

The mental list of things needing repair is updated

to avoid tears. If you come back I demand for you to kiss me, until

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I no longer feel like a

maintained swimming pool

sleeping in the face of winter.

When you see me again if you still care pull the weeds from

these lungs. Put them out of their

suspended misery, and smash all this sad turquoise

suffocating me.

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“Earning Empathy by Harmony Ries Reger

I remember the predominant feeling the moment I saw that first perfect fetus etching across that colorless computer screen, cool gel sliding gentle pressure across my abdomen, warm tears sliding heavy emotion across my face. Inadequacy. A multitude of emotions that day I first learned I was to be a mother, some the most lovely, but that one ugly fiend screamed loudest, and lingers long into my days still, digs deeper into my heart, grabbing foothold with each whisper of its mirage-truth. Undone laundry (inadequate), unfinished homework (inadequate), untamed tongue (Inadequate). This list of endless shortcomings grows weed-wild into life, and I find myself muddy, pulling desperate at these deep rooted faults, curved into that familiar position, the only position I know to weed this soul-garden, any garden; huddled low on bent knees. We decided (assuming we have any say in such things) some time ago that we would grow another soul into our family. We set out hopeful anticipation on this, most meaningful of adventures. Fickle hearted creatures we are though, time stretched thin our hopes, storms threatened dark cloud-doubts around us, each lonely pink line on yet another test (inadequate) led me muddy to those knees. There's a whole world of things we can't know about others until we find ourselves drowning in the same storm waters, hands stretching out, seeking anyone else to grasp hold of, to ride out these tormenting waters with. My adventure took me to places I'd not chosen, led me to heart places where women hurt together hope-weary for that illusive double pink line, that promise of a new soul. I had given up trying, accepted that it may not be His will, guilt riddled (inadequate) for grieving a soul that was not, while blessed with an already full quiver. Ashamed (inadequate) of the emotional turmoil so poorly justified when measured next to the empty wombs of these women I tread waters with, women on ten year hope journeys waiting painful patience for that promise fulfilled. It's the story that stabs deepest while clinging together in those life-raft blogs of commiseration. The "all we did was quit trying" story. Infertility remains mostly a mystery for me, undoubtedly I had only a small taste of this bitter fruit, and my sympathies felt for those wounded by miscarriage can't scrape at an understanding. It's easy to claim gratitude now as my feet find holding beneath them, as I wade out from those waters, an unlikely visitor, in some ways just a spectator really, with two sleeping babes, and that enviable double pink line trophy. But retrospect holds views that make clear hurt blurred purposes. And while I can't proclaim each reason for all those hurts, I can claim that sometimes hurting, really, truly, deeply, hurting, is the best thing that happens to us. Sometimes hurting bonds us soul-to-soul with one another, pouring out that rare treasure of real understanding. I believe that our good God is true to promises to prosper, and not to harm, and some mud-filled days spent bent in prayer under storming skies,

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ripping weeds that root deep hurts prepare our garden for blooms that steal our breath, silence those voices screaming (inadequate), make ready the soil for bringing forth fruit we couldn't otherwise see possible. Of course I'm grateful for my hope renewed with that positive test, but I'm so heartbreakingly grateful for this hardest earned treasure; empathy. Joey lost his favorite patient the morning that I shared with him the news of our pregnancy, a death he had dreaded the inevitability of for years. I feared the news would be clouded by his grief, but as the realization of what the message I'd left him meant, his grief turned to wonder. We marveled together at the grace of it all. That familiar foe is loud these days. Dishes go undone (inadequate), meals are carb-heavy and nutrient-light (inadequate), fatigue gets the best of me (inadequate). He gives us more grace. It's another promise I cling to, a promise whose proof is written all over this life of mine. And while it's utterly confounding, I'm bent on soul knees red from wear, tending to this garden the best I know how, arms lifted high in grateful acceptance of those giving rains that nourish us in unexpected ways.

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“Thigh-Gap” by Afshan Shafi

What eclectic distances! My sister bears her soul, below her navel, in the twin sluices of her thighs, her bisque skin bears the torrent of her blush; a hot furling caramel, now hungered into a kind of tissue or a pike's hide of waxes At 7 she would roar songs of harlem, erotic, cerise writ by soporific provocateurs but writ nonetheless She wanted to wake up as rihanna her hands carried her highest scream, her rigorous melodies to electric ends, her knuckles gagged with contagion with force to be (this neo-barbindian woman, the avenger of our buoyancy/ she only proclaims a peculiar fire) At 11 she attempted the expressionist resilience of Ella Fitzgerald, her remote, apostate magic, her galavanting preambles, Now she watches her tune draining in eddy's orange into the aorta of her thigh gap Now she gawps a more spartan lilt gawps and tongues a sheer moving bubble from mouth to gut Now her sentences are as flat as ironed butterflies, in formaldehyde coffins. Anyone brandishing a half cup of chub is a 'failure' an arm only bashfully curved, is a leonine, tattered wound the imago, militant hunkers down, like glass in the throat

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the webs of her infant dream blacken her cheeks like rotten apples spasm and erode a choral verdigris binds her muscle-film from angle to arc she can't sing herself out of body anymore or bandit love and freedom around or talk of things that grow liver-full with lustre or roar a kitschy opera around the house; ambient like milled flesh. She cannot see her deciduous elegance interred Her ears cannot hear the wild blue of her room being swallowed by a black propeller wailing in the center (the body in history is an addendum to the asemic climax/the loss that creates the woman , flowers the child) She has forgotten the quotidian gospel of the body when lit; those feet which hold thighs, bearers of omission the pilot of the deerish belly holding the heart , Dada-ist raspberry, the tender chronic neck that holds the mouth, that delves the true, the mind, that devotee of composition, hoarding all the goddess moons of pluto. (the viscera in question is a trope for Dali to consider on old lace paper) All her notions taste like wings on the tongue but are halved to wheat She murmurs a song like brack on a puddle she sings the dark water of her hair, she trills and trills , small fleets of tin soldiers, but she cannot sing her way

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to the pitch of her dream, to baudy fat greed again she cannot sing for she is sculpting the coarse muddle of her body, she is smoothing it out, pins clutched in the mouth, she is hammering the pelt, she must straighten it out, this ethereal membrane she must not let this body float she must not let her body glide on this heavy earth these acres of multiplying light

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“Power” by Stephen Mead

It's interesting, this electrode they've stuck in my skull: a switch & needle, that drug patch to monitor, control what's considered subversive. I feel it like a Geiger counter, some ticking to detect when I think: "God, how I love his——" & then comes the voltage, sharp electricity keening until numbness comes on. Why, in the name of Politics, Science, should they want to stop who I am? To erase the spirit, rape the memory, invade my body with a chainsaw? Crackle. Zzzztttt——— A wireless, in & out, I fade, lose transmission although the will's potent still, a quiet drill of power in the powerless. That is who starts revolutions, our energy slumbering to grow slowly kinetic like the ocean with its glinting tides, & also, like trees, breathing zeniths rooted as squadrons in an earth more potent than this brutal factory of pins, these erodible shots. Watch how the waves wrestle, how limbs flail & surge. You cannot batten them down now for I will outlive, survive this awful ghost state & grow old, grow old, as the free waves, the electric Elms sweep sweep you off.

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“Sunday” by Tango Barraza

The lightly buttered ham and cheese omelet and the cold beers that followed Made me feel like a god on some holy Sunday morning

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“AMSTERDAM” by Carl Boon

The oak in the hotel lobby beside the Van Gogh Museum and the strawberries made love interesting. But there was a girl who doubted me, who stepped among the bicycles (quickly) for Heineken on draft and pepperoni pizza on Paulus Potterstraat, while I lay in bed gazing, and nothing made sense. The maid came to clean, and I pretended to sleep through her Dutch meanderings of names and places and why the bathroom seemed to be too clean to be a bathroom—in Amsterdam, Munich, Sao Paulo, anywhere. I wasn't dreaming. I awoke and the girl was still gone, her lone alibi a strawberry she'd bitten to the stem. There was lipstick and night upon it, and a note that read the Sunflowers are lovely and you are not a sunflower. And so I came to be an old man when I was young in Amsterdam.

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“La Poesía” by Justo Yanez

Could I fill the swollen suit of a man so large: Quien vivió en las torres de la mente de su pueblo, Escondido en las raíces debajo de la tierra Española?1 Where his people danced in the streets, bare-footed, Beams of luces2 arrowed through the beads of their sweat ¡Canciones de montañas indígenas3: Old songs sprouted in the holes of every volcano! Viejos4: drunk and gray-hair, pasted with sweat, Dance and make sharp turns to the guitarra5, Like the galloping horses, they rode when they were young vaqueros. Gritando6: ¡Canciones de montañas indígenas7: Old songs sprouted in the holes of every volcano! Las mujeres y las niñas8— Tortilla flour on their hands and Nicaraguan clay on their feet— Sway their rags in the winds, Their braids capture the music of every Hispanic Cinderella, Living to the music of La Poesía9. El Poeta canta a ellos10: ¡Canciones de montañas indígenas11: Old songs sprouted in the holes of every volcano! Díos12, con sus labios13 dusted with the dirt of cocoa beans, Licks his fingers and goes off to bed

                                                                                                               1  Whom  lived  in  the  towers  of  his  people's  mind,  /  Tucked  in  the  roots  underneath  Spanish  dirt  2  Lights  3  Songs  of  indigenous  mountains  4  Old  men  5  Guitar  6  Yelling  7  Songs  of  indigenous  mountains  8  Women  and  little  girls  9  Poetry  10  The  poet  sings  to  them  11  Songs  of  indigenous  mountains  12  God  13  With  his  lips  

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Tucked in the rays of his Holy mother Bajo de los planetas y la espuma de las estrellas14. El Poeta canta a ellos15: ¡Canciones de montañas indígenas16:

Old songs sprouted in the holes of every volcano!

“¿Dónde está papá?” by Justo Yanez

¿Dónde está papá, el final del libro de cuentos?17 The weathered one—The one that cascades a waterfall of shimmery glitter, When you lift it to your eyes. ¿Dónde está papá, la noche ya olvidado?18 Plume-blacked night of masked estrellas: los niños de Dios asustados de pecado19. My hands painted by the crushed plums On your plate. ¿Dónde está papá, los sueños de tu vida?20 The spiraled colors dusted from your negligence, My soiled diapers from your negligence: The million heartbreaks of my mother. ¿Dónde está papá, la función de la masculinidad?21 Brim-stern; chiseled mouth; color de la tierra y piedra22; A barricade of sterile bulls; the vomit of volcano ash and fire! Viajando solo23: I ask these questions to fleeing flock of Floreanas.

“Ariel” by Justo Yanez

Ariel24, under la luna y las nubes25, a wind, featherlight, carries a scent:                                                                                                                14  Under  the  planets  and  the  foam  of  the  stars  15  The  poet  sings  to  them  16  Songs  of  indigenous  mountains  17 Where is it father, the ending of the storybook? 18 Where is it father, the night already forgotten? 19 God’s children afraid of sin 20 Where is it father, the dreams of your life? 21 Where is it father, the role of masculinity?  22  The color of earth and rock  23  Traveling alone  24  Spirit  of  the  air  in  William  Shakespeare’s  The  Tempest;  Hebrew  name  meaning  “Lion  of  God”  

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Of Jasmine and Heliotrope26. Yo siento en el alma y los dedos27, Cines28, pearl-white, stitching their necks together, with their black-eyes fastening their gaze.

¡Cantar— Llamadas de trompeta!29 Ariel, their brass-songs cuentan una historia de latón dorado30, Made just for you: “Deep in la tierra31, where the salt of sea circles and collects, A cloven pine, sprouted mighty and rough. Sus pies32 tangled en las raíces33 Your heart, still, in the stickiness of the sap, Tus ojos34 peeking between the edges of the bark Y el halcón, sus ojos de la naturaleza35, rests on your fingers that were leaves. Out of it, you came, from that tree, Floating on the stillness of the wind, Trigo y hojas36 trapped in you hair. Immediately you noticed my sins. ‘Estás tres hombres de pecado, quien el destino37 will smite!’ You howled. Those demons stirred in me, from the gales of your threats— And fled.

¡Las Estrellas y la Luna y el Sol, Brillado con tu Amor!38

Hand-in-hand we walked the Earth, the Desert, and Seas, We camped in the mountains and hid behinds stars, Your mouth caught las abejas39 buzzing in the breeze.”

                                                                                                               25  The  moon  and  the  clouds  26  Symbol  of  eternal  love  27  I  feel  in  my  soul  and  in  my  fingers  28  Swans  29  Sing—  trumpet  songs!  30  They  tell  a  story  of  golden  brass  31  The  earth  32  Your  feet  33  In  the  roots  34  Your  eyes  35  And  the  hawk,  your  nature  eyes,  36  Wheat  and  leaves  37  You  are  three  men  of  Sin,  whom  Destiny  (line  from  The  Tempest)  38  The  Stars  and  the  Moon  and  the  Sun  /  Shone  with  your  love!  

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Ariel, under la luna y las nubes, You watched and shepherd my cotton flocks of love Así que caminamos sobre las piedras de la vida40, Hand-in-hand, Careful not to trip, Yo en sus raíces, y tu de tu bastón41.

A holy matrimony. Un marido feliz42.

                                                                                                               39  The  bees  40  So  we  walked  on  the  stones  of  life  41  Me  on  your  roots,  and  you  on  your  staff  42  A  happy  husband