the honey land review spring 2011 volume 3 issue 2

Volume 3 Issue 2Spring 2011

Weeds by James Owens

Photography by Jacob OetOld World

Photography by James OwensThe Pink Coat

Photography by Hillary EvansAlaska WanderingsPhotography by Ryan Luz

Photography by Hillary Evans Into the LakePhotography by Brian Betteridge

Playground Study

Photography by Renee MalletSolitaire

Photography by Ali Wisch

Photography by James OwensMigrants

Photography by Renee MallettRoil

Poetry

Photography

Graduate student spotlight

Page 3 J.P Dancing Bear Cowgirl GuernicaPage 5 Elijah Burrell Getting There Page 7 William Doreski The Brown DecadesPage 9 Zachary Greenberg Nightblooming Cereus Page 11 Lois Marie Harrod Your Name Like Cutlery Page 13 Bill Hudson At Yellow PointPage 15 Joanne Lowery Fruit, Perhaps 1868Page 17 Joseph Somoza Equivalence Page 19 Barry Spacks Glass Boxes 1 Mark Allan Williams One or Two

Cover, Page 6 James OwensPage 8 Ali Wisch Page 10 Renee MallettPage 12 Brian Betteridge Page 14,18 Hillary Evans Page 16 Ryan Luz Page 22 Jacob Oet

Page 24 Calvin Olsen Boston University Page 25-29 Contributors Bios

Editor in Chief

Photography Editor Associate Editor

Theresa BruzeseAmy Westphal

Anne Hasenstab

The Honey Land Review is a contemporary web journal dedicated to the poetry and photography of both emerging and established artists.We embrace work that pushes the boundaries of art and cre-ativity and applaud risk takers. HLR publishes online bi-annually and welcomes submissions from across the globe.

Honey Land ReviewAll Rights Reserved Copyright 2010/2011


Poetry

Photography

Graduate student spotlight

Page 4 J.P Dancing Bear Cowgirl GuernicaPage 6 Elijah Burrell Getting There Page 8 William Doreski The Brown DecadesPage 10 Zachary Greenberg Nightblooming Cereus Page 12 Lois Marie Harrod Your Name Like Cutlery Page 14 William Hudson At Yellow PointPage 16 Joanne Lowery Fruit, Perhaps 1868Page 18 Joseph Somoza Equivalence Page 20 Barry Spacks Glass Boxes Page 22 Mark Alan Williams One or Two

Cover, Page 7, 21 James OwensPage 9 Ali Wisch Page 11 Renee MallettPage 13 Brian Betteridge Page 15,19 Hillary Evans Page 17 Ryan Luz Page 23 Jacob Oet

Page 25 Calvin Olsen Boston University Page 26-30 Contributors Bios

J.P. Dancing Bear

Cowgirl Guernica for Barbara Shomaker

you may have instigated the whole thing: you know: what with telling the cowgirls (half cow/half girl) to pay attention to the dwindling buffalo: it didn’t take much: just one more loser cowpoke: staring at a nice set of udders: is all: they never saw it coming (again—too busy staring at udders): the CGs overtook the covered wagon: and the stage: all headed west: they shot the sheriff: AND the deputy: and burned down the town with the sunset: left a pyre of mannequins: over-proportioned Barbie dolls of objectification: bags of money in the back of the coach: like breasts: they could go to Hollywood: make a movie: live on the edge of the world: write a book: about rebellion: re-written into a screenplay: to take place in the glorious Western mythos

The honeyland review 4

Photography by Renee MallettRoil

Elijah Burrell

Getting ThereLittle Egypt cradles repellent charmlike my own soiled roads back home; the sunbehind a corn-stalked skyline in Illinois

darkens to headlighted roadwork signs, grain blur.We’ve been sub-compact captives for days; her legsrub the dashboard, her sweat like liniment—

solace, relief from blistering miles betweenthe place I miss and anywhere but. When she rollsher window down, the breeze-blown scent is rich,

humid like the dirt behind my Uncle Bud’swhen he’d till it over and over before he fedit tomato seeds, packed it down with his shovel.

She sleeps like I did when I was a child;I’d drift off in Bud’s living room to the loose-strung sounds of his Martin guitar, my pockets jangling

sticky bottle caps from Sunkists I’d drank.She’s like the citrus-berry breath of that placelong passed I’d like to catch in a jar and put up.


Photography by James OwensMigrants

At last I find a blank sheet and sitat the rolltop desk to recoverthe holograph that once informed meabout the world outside the self.With a blunt pencil I scrawl “brownas rat-hide, brown as faded drapes,

brown as moonlight filtered throughfilthy windows.” The paperson the floor rustle as mice—not rats—nest with tiny cries of joy,and the tall windows doff their gazeas someone else draws the drapes.

Fumbling for a slice of paperon which to scrawl the hasty notesthat keep me alive. The officeglooms in deep Edwardian browns.Lewis Mumford called that periodthe Brown Decades. No one survives

from that era, draperies rottedand sprawled on dusty floors. Ratsnest in horsehide upholstery,ghosts of watery old women prowlthrough the rubble. Albumen printsof Egypt and Yosemite, water-stained

beyond restoration, fade. But allthese ruined townhouses nowhave restored themselves. Young coupleswith exaggerated incomes hogfour and five-story buildingsin the South End of Boston, Park Slope

in Brooklyn, Back Bay and Harlem.The ghosts have crumpled like tissue.The rats have died in toxic lairs.Only this office where I shuffleunusable pages in hopeof finding a clean side to write on

retains the sienna darkof an era best forgotten. Grimwith purpose, I dump old fileson the floor and root through them.Deeds, briefs, wills, affidavits.Who generated this legal gush?

The Brown DecadesWilliam Doreski

Photography by Ali Wisch


Nightblooming CereusAlready prone to disappearingI entered books.

The first one said take your time,but go out and buy an axe. Chop the paininto planks, sand down the splinters.Now burn it. Now turn away.

I relearned to lay down the I Ching stalks, and my first draw landed on Clinging, Radiance.The hexagram said something like: become the eye that demands to be opened, so will open. The pupil that hides is fragile, must blink as dry brush can avoid berries but not wind, as she who does not answer to the rudder will answer to the rocks.

Drifting off with Cacti & Succulentstented on my bed like hands in prayer, the forgotten pose, my hands in prayer. But if you look closely they are unclenched, a nightblooming cereus, queen of the night, face pressed down beneath the candelabra cactus,vanished in such sleep.

Zachary Greenberg

Calvin Olsen

Graduate

Calvin Olsen was born and raised in Meridian, ID. He received a B.A. in English from Brigham Young University, where he was introduced to contemporary poetry. He recently received a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship from Boston University, where he is completing an MFA, and has recently traveled to the Iberian Peninsula to continue a translation project based around the poems of Alberto de Lacerda. More of his work will appear in the forthcoming anthology Fire in the Pasture and Clarion. He currently lives in Brookline, MA, and works as an Editorial Assis-tant at AGNI magazine.

Graduate

Photography by Renee MallettSolitaire


Lois Marie Harrod

Your Name Like Cutlery

There is hunger the thumb remembers, the heft of the handle, the narrow neck, my forefinger tracing the inside of the bowl.

I saw my mouth falling like a seed. So the sun dissolves into husk and silk and each milky kernel finds a tongue to speak.

We call this provender without utensil,and yet a knife and fork reminds us of sustenance: back, neck, prong, point, slotted root.

Listen as nameless as you please and someone’s ear will confer a tang, a tip, a bolstered blade upon you.

It may not be the cutting edge you desire, but it too can find its meat.

J o a n n e L o w e r y

Fruit, Perhaps 1868

Edgar, come back from the dead,from Paris, the Louvre, and café.For one hour again be Monsieur Degasand I will be the model turning from off the stoolto hear you say my bottom is like a pear,

that favorite fruit from life’s bowldefining the shape of my backside.With your brush restore the rough touchI have missed and the sense that someonewith an unforgiving eye can look and seethat however speckled and pastel, I am thin-skinnedand delicious. Just from a slope, a stroke,your quick look, let me surpass Eve’s apple.


Photography by Hillary Evans Into the LakePhotography by Brian Betteridge

Playground Study


William Hudson

At Yellow Point

I like a loneplace, where the low humof a small plane drawsyour eye upward and you automaticallyscan till you catchthe movement thenthe shape and you follow by instinct,tracking its progressacross the emptiness till the distanceis unmarked andstill, asbefore.

J o a n n e L o w e r y

Fruit, Perhaps 1868




Photography by Hillary Evans Into the Lake

Joanne Lowery

Fruit, Perhaps 1868




Photography by Ryan Luz

Joseph Somoza

Equivalence

That little thought-current that occurred to me, or in me, while walking from shower to bedroom, that has nowdisappeared—though maybe justflowed downstream and I can retrieve it later. That’s

how these Ravel piano piecesstrike me—like the trickle ofsnow-melt down a hill, trills lit by sunlightflowing over obstacles, drawn invisibly.

Like the flow of this moment to this.


Spotlight

Two handstoo tallto scarethe birds(are theyawakeor not)stand stillto watchthe sunbeginto burn.A boybelowits feethas cometo seethe cornbeforethe cornwill notlet himbe seen.He’s triedso longto touchthe hands(awakeor not)that touchthe birdsthe cloudsthe starsthat moveso slowup there.

Scarecrow

The honey land review 24

Due to the unique layout of this poem please use the zoom tool located above to enlarge this poem for reading.

Calvin Olsen

Graduate

Calvin Olsen was born and raised in Meridian, ID. He received a B.A. in English from Brigham Young University, where he was introduced to contemporary poetry. He recently received a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship from Boston University, where he is completing an MFA, and will be traveling to the Iberian Peninsula this summer to continue a translation project based around the poems of Alberto de Lacerda. More of his work will appear in the forthcoming anthology Fire in the Pasture. He currently lives in Brook-line, MA, and works as an Editorial Assistant at AGNI magazine.


Mark Allan WilliamsOne or Two


We scale adultery like a fence—catching at footholds, scrabbling to a straddle, taking in a view of the next neighborhood. In one rush we see our newair conditioning units nestledbehind someone else’s rosebushes, last year’s patio furniture stacked next to a strange garage. We recognize the weed-eater scars, thechecker-patterned lawns, the broken mailboxes hanging open like black eyes. We hop down gingerly—Honey, I’m home.But often we get so turned aroundin all the straddling and keeping our eyes shut that we get off on the wrong sideof the fence and strollaway unknowing, forever walking new neighborhoodsexpecting the old driveway.


Photography by Hillary EvansAlaska Wanderings


Barry Spacks

Glass Boxes

All these glass boxes in the worldfilled with whatever’s dear: miles of silence, a lover’s shirt,a sharky ocean, a quested scent,(the shows of familiar things: the waya pen lies aslant across an ashtray, the risk of a reach toward anyone’s touch...)and what if your crucial, most intimate box,should shatter its diorama glass(at last it must) -- will a Genie appear,a grantor of wishes in golden turban,great body emerging clad in silks,to lavish on you grand offerings...or maybe no more than a sigh of airto tell you you’re lonely and free?

Spotlight


Scarecrow



Calvin Olsen

Graduate



Mark Allan WilliamsOne or Two




Mark Alan Williams

One or Two



Spotlight


Scarecrow



Calvin Olsen

Graduate



Calvin Olsen

Graduate

Calvin Olsen was born and raised in Meridian, ID. He received a B.A. in English from Brigham Young University, where he was introduced to contemporary poetry. He recently received a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship from Boston University, where he is completing an MFA, and has recently traveled to the Iberian Peninsula to continue a translation project based around the poems of Alberto de Lacerda. More of his work will appear in the forthcoming anthology Fire in the Pasture and Clarion. He currently lives in Brookline, MA, and works as an Editorial Assis-tant at AGNI magazine.

Graduate

SpotlightTwo handstoo tallto scarethe birds(are theyawakeor not)stand stillto watchthe sunbeginto burna boybelowits feethas cometo seethe cornbeforethe cornwill notlet himbe seenhe’s triedso longto touchthe hands(awakeor not)that touchthe birdsthe cloudsthe starsthat moveso slowup there.

Scarecrow



Contributor Bios

Featured PoetsJ.P Dancing Bear J.P Dancing Bear’s tenth collection of poems, Family of Marsupial Centaurs, is forthcoming in 2011 from Iris Press. His most recent published collections, Inner Cities of Gulls and Conflicted Light, are available from Salmon Poetry. He is the editor of the American Poetry Journal and Dream Horse Press, and also hosts the poetry radio program, Out of Our Minds, on KKUP FM and available in podcasts.

Elijah Burrell Elijah Burrell is working toward his MFA in the Ben-nington Writing Seminars. His poetry has been published in The Sugar House Review, Swink Magazine, The Country Dog Review, Muscle & Blood, The Penwood Review, Blast Furnace, and Under One Sun. Burrell was the recipient of the 2009 Cecil A. Blue Award in Poetry, and a finalist in the 2010 Pinch Poetry Contest. He resides in Jefferson City, Missouri with his wife and two little girls.

William Doreski William Doerski is a Professor of English at Keene State College (New Hampshire) where he teaches creative writing, literary theory, and modern poetry. Doreski received a Ph.D. from Boston Univer-sity and has published several collections of poetry, most recently Waiting for the Angel (Pygmy Forest Press, 2009) and Another Ice Age (Cedar Hill, 2007), and three critical studies—The Years of Our Friendship: Robert Lowell and Allen Tate (University Press of Mississippi, 1990), and The Modern Voice in American Poetry (University Press of Florida, 1995), Rob-ert Lowell’s Shifting Colors (Ohio University Press, 1999)--and a textbook entitled How to Read and Interpret Poetry (Prentice-Hall). His critical essays, poetry, and reviews have appeared in many academic and literary journals, including Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, The Alem-bic, New England Quarterly, Harvard Review, Modern Philology, Antioch Review, Natural Bridge. In 2010 he won the Aesthetica prize for poetry.

Featured PoetsZachary Greenberg Zachary Greenberg is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Vanderbilt University. A California native, Zachary has worked as a counselor at a substance abuse treatment center in Los An-geles, and as a mentor for students with learning disabilities in Monterey. Currently he facilitates creative writing workshops at the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center for cancer patients and survivors. His poetry has appeared in Off The Coast, Tabula Rasa Medical Arts Journal, and Xylem Magazine. He is co-founding editor of Nashville Review.

Lois Marie Harrod Lois Marie Harrod’s 11th book Brief Term, poems about teaching, was published by Black Buzzard Press (2011), and her chapbook Cosmogony won the 2010 Hazel Lipa Chapbook contest (Iowa State University). Her chapbook Furniture won the 2008 Grayson Press Poetry Prize. Previous publications include the chapbook Firmament (2007); the chapbook Put Your Sorry Side Out (2005); Spelling the World Backward (2000); the chapbook This Is a Story You Already Know (l999); Part of the Deeper Sea (1997); the chapbook Green Snake Riding (l994), Crazy Alice (l991) Every Twinge a Verdict (l987). She won her third poetry fellowship from the New Jersey Council on the Arts in 2003. Over 400 of her poems have been published online and in print journals including Ameri-can Poetry Review, Blueline, The MacGuffin, Salt, The Literary Review, Verse Daily and Zone 3. A Geraldine R. Dodge poet and former high school teacher, she teaches Creative Writing at The College of New Jersey.

Bill Hudson Bill Hudson was born in Arkansas, grew up in Illinois, lives now in Spokane, where he is employed by a community action pro-gram. His work has appeared in The Caribbean Writer, Review Americana, The Other Journal, Shaking Like A Mountain, Willowsprings, and else-where.

Featured Poets

Joanne LoweryJoanne Lowery’s poems have appeared in many literary magazines includ-ing Birmingham Poetry Review, Rattle, Slant, Cottonwood, and Poetry East. Her most recent collection is the chapbook Scything published by Future-Cycle Press. She lives in Michigan.

Barry SpacksBarry Spacks earns his keep teaching writing and literature at UC Santa Barbara, California, after many years of the same at M.I.T. He’s published poems widely in journals paper and pixel, plus stories, two novels, ten po-etry collections, and three CDs of selected work.

Joseph SomozaJoseph Somoza retired from teaching at New Mexico State and editingwith PUERTO DEL SOL a few years back to have more time for his writing. He has published four books and four chapbooks of poetry over the yearsand lives in Las Cruces with wife Jill, a painter

Mark Alan WilliamsMark Alan Williams is a doctoral fellow in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Louisville, where he is writing a dissertation on embodied practice in contemporary religion. His poetry has appeared most recently in the Tulane Review, and he has a forthcoming essay on Lord Jim in Con-radiana. He is grateful, as always, for the opportunity to share his work.

Ryan Luzis a poet and photographer. He is a second-year student in the Univer-sity of California at San Diego’s creative writing MFA program. His poems appear in the current issue of Hot Metal Bridge and his photog-raphy can be found at ryanaluz.

James OwensJames Owens lives in New Carlisle, Ind. Two books of his poems have been published: An Hour is the Doorway (Black Lawrence Press) and Frost Lights a Thin Flame (Mayapple Press). His poems, stories, trans-lations, and photographs have appeared widely in literary journals. He walks in the dunes along the southern shore of Lake Michigan and watches the waves and the gulls. He never poses photographs, preferring his work to be a continual call-and-response with the quick, nerved edge of what happens to happen.

Jacob OetJacob Oet is 17 and lives in Solon, Ohio. He has loved writing and making images since he was little. Jacob’s poetry and images appear in Cicada Magazine, Straylight Magazine, The New Verse News, The Jet Fuel Review, Superstition Review, H.O.D., and OVS Magazine.

Renee MallettRenee Mallett collects old cameras and puts them to work again. She has a BA in Creative Writing and is the author of several books, all avail-able or forthcoming from Schiffer Publishing. Her next book, Dia de los Muertos covering the art and traditions of Mexico’s Day of the Dead holiday, will be available in 2012. You can visit this artist online anytime at ReneeMallett or in person at Western Ave Studios in Lowell, Massa-chusetts the first Saturday of every month.

Featured Photographers

Featured PhotographersAli Wisch Ali Wisch is a twenty-five year old writer, artist and photographer. She has been writing since 2004 and holds a degree in Professional Writing from Champlain College. She has published two plays, “25 Squirrels” and “The Hot Pink Meltdown,” both of which have been produced. She has also worked as a producer in the theatre industry and has been published in Sports Illustrated, Resource Magazine, Points In Case, Inscape Literary Magazine, Boxcar Poetry Review, eHow and The MacGuffin.Currently living in Cambridge, MA with her boyfriend, Adam and her two cats, Henry and Lillian and working on her book Memoirs of a Twenty-Five Year Old plus writing for eHow.

Hillary EvansHillary Evans grew up in Northern California in a family that loved photography. She can recall the sour scents of chemicals that perme-ated the dark room her father built in the garage and has countless memories of posing so her mother could practice with light and color. Now she lives in the Los Angeles area where she oversees a program that provides supportive housing for the formerly homeless.Photogra-phy, travel and writing provide her balance. Hillary workshops weekly with a group of local writers, focusing on creative non-fiction, and has submited work to be published. An essay about her experiences with the poor of Sierra Leone and her photographs were featured in Geez Magazine’s Spring 2010 edition.“Alaskan Wanderings” was taken in Junea, Alaska. “Into the Lake” was taken in Lake Tahoe, California.

Brian BeteridgeBrain Beteridge is a Philadelphia-area photographer. His work has been featured in the Berkeley Fiction Review as well as numerous other print and online journals.

the honey land review spring 2011 volume 3 issue 2

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