in truth

People can be like a bottle
shaken up, contents
inside the plain
brown
glass
building pressure -
quietly waiting
to explode.

wilt

She sent him a letter, sat
waiting for him to arrive.
Her sweaty palms stuck
to her skirt
as she smoothed it,
biting her lip watching
the window.
It was sad to see her
jump every time
she thought
she saw him
come in, smile
fading like a street
light at the turn
of night to morning.

if i learned to play the guitar so i could sing this to you would you promise to love me forever and never ever not ever leave?

-elliott smith

‘angel in the snow’

Frustrations of an Editor (or Some of This Shit is So Good it’s Blowing My Mind…)

Editoress?  ;)

Laying out a literary journal is hard work.  Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently.  In fact, editing a literary journal is hard work.  It’s a far cry from the, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to do this…?’ that started me down this path.  There are so many questions to ask yourself.  Do I put two small poems on a page?  Does that take away from the significance of each poem?  Is this journal going to be five hundred pages long if I give each tiny poem its own page?  What font should I use?  Shit is getting weird when you are up at three in the morning asking yourself if a particular font looks arrogant.  Then there are photograps to fit and resolution to think about and printing preferences and well, money to spend.

My website, LiteraryMary.com was not originally created to be something taken very seriously.  Mostly, it was created as a middle finger salute to the writingforums I had been using at the time.  All the sudden, we turn around and there are almost five hundred members, a hell of a lot of great writers, great writing and really great people.  I remember when we knew every single person who registered, and I remember that initial feeling of weirdness when people started registering that we didn’t know.

I don’t really know why I’m rambling all this out onto the page except maybe that I have been doing layout for so long my fingers are aching to actually type something.

So the journal comes out January 1st and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit the deadline is stressing me out.  I’ve never worked with a serious deadline.  In reality, my deadlines are all for essays due for school, and on top of all this it’s almost finals time at school.  So all the sudden I’m in a world of important deadlines.  Maybe some things I just said there are contradictory, but that’s how I roll – or so I’m told anyway.

For those of you who don’t know who we are, come visit:

www.LiteraryMary.com

You may be surprised to find out exactly how addictive we are.

who’s there?

the sound
of wind
some autumn
night

w

h

0

0

s

h

i

n

g

through
the skeleton
leaves
of an oak.

not amuse

if i ask
if it’s about me
he’ll snap
that he’s a writer.
if i stop reading
he’ll accuse me
of not caring.
if i say
it’s brilliant
(it usually is…)
he’ll reply
he writes for himself.

in the end
i may not be wrong
but i will never
ever
be right
and i will
always be
whoever
he’s written me
to be.

Enormously Solitary

Sometimes without cause after class,
I sit on the steps in the bluster amidst
the energy of autumn leaves blowing.
The expanse of the sky is humbling
and the stars seem as a dot to dot
that, like my thoughts, cannot be connected.
Tucked inside my black wool coat
the cold cannot touch me, hood raised,
I’m freed from feigning polite communication.
The sound of the wind in the trees, fills
my heart with something almost like love,
pushing out the loneliness which clings to me,
as static, an overwhelming current
of electricity that mutates rational thought.
Nights like this, enormously solitary,
I wish to be the wind, unburdened
and fearless, impossible to ground,
freed from the weight of all thought.

Asunder

We’ve moved through a year
parallel but unsynchronized,
separate although side by side;
from inquisitive awareness
of acquaintance to love-struck
blindness and back again,
hand-in-hand, half-drunk crossing
a shallow river over tumbled
rocks slippery with moss.
Me stumbling, you steadying,

My stranded hands illustrate
tempests for you, floating them off
incomplete as corked glass crossing
the sea only to turn to dust storms
upon opening. My calloused fingers
fail to fabricate our mosaics
from sand and saline, abstractions
you somehow complete; crafting
clarity from incongruity

me.

hangin out in the parking lot of dairy queen