How are Sea and Ocean Different?

Ocean is the realer thing-

brine with real salt that dries the lips

and sun off the wave knits a web in the eye.

Men spend a life drenched through their waders,

hauling up empty pots, eyeing the chickens.

Good ones hanging offshore; the hull needs work.

Sea is the wind between two planets,

the silver place on ancient maps,

spuming with narwhals and dolphins,

collared with green lace and hung with pearls.

Ships there go with quiet sails,

and the wind is kind to travelers.

I have sailed a life at sea

while my father works the ocean.

Philip Hasouris has been writing for many years. Like many poets, he began unsure of his words, kept them hidden in notebooks, draws, closets, always in the back of his mind. Started reading publicly, and eventually people started listening. Since then, he has taken every opportunity to share the words.

Philip has been involved in many formats of poetry. He has been featured at many local and national venues. He was Co-champion (1997) of the Brockton Slam and Brockton Slam Team member who competed at the nationals in Austin Texas (1998) He is a founder of the performance group "Spiritous" which combined poetry, music, and movement. He has performed with a variety of musicians in Improvisational jazz/poetry, and in 2000 collaborated in the making of the CD Dreams and Schemes.

Philip has had his first book of poetry "Swimming Alone" published (2002) by "Friends of Poetry" and qualified as a member of the Brockton Poet Tribe Slam Team (2003) Alternate, Boston Cantab Slam Team (2005) Released his second CD with music by Adam Mujica "Cross The Double Line"

with fellow poet James G.H. Moore, Philip is Co-produced the poetry video series P.L.A.C.E.S. (Poetic Language Artful Communication Elemental Speech) filming poets in their homes, creative space, natural surroundings, giving the audience a virtual tour of the inner workings of poetry,

Life expectancy

Why did you call?

      I needed to hear your sound.

In this moment of my existence

I sought familiarity

in this mind maze

ebb and flow of past, future

I desired your presence.

If you blow into the trunk of an elephant

it will never forget your scent,

in this intimate interaction

karma is forever joined,
when one passes the other will grieve

trumpeting sorrow.

Life expectancy of an elephant, 70 years.

 How long has it been since I’ve told you…?

          A few weeks, couple of months.

A blank stare, our lives splinter,

melt, spill into cracks.

Listen to voices inside

discard them at the push, pull of time

we hesitate, our true falling.

Our words strain against empty air

and I’ve been meaning to tell you

I remember, our eyes

holding secrets.

We rush off

brush against each other

our lips flat.

These predictable kisses

these monotone promises

“I love you”

“Love you too”

now we dance like ghosts.

In our separate ways

we came together

in our time together

we went our separate ways.

Push against empty air.

Pygmy goby fish are born,

struggle to survive, mature, mate,

lay their eggs defend their young, die.

Full life.

Life fulfilled.

Life expectancy of pygmy goby fish,

a few weeks, couple of months.

What are you thinking?

        Nothing.

         Wait…

That’s not true,

why do candy bars always look bigger in vending machines?

Behind the glass we anticipate

eyes magnified.

We pursue, stop at each slotted prize

consider, yank on lever

wait for tumble

wrap hands around.

j.g.h. moore wrote “Our walls were up and we knew it”

David R Surette wrote “Never miss anything, ever”

So where are we in between these lines

these walls and never miss

these pencil scratches that score our human frailty.

Life expectancy of human frailty,

unknown.

Are you there?

      Yes, I was just thinking of us.

Black Scarab

I.
A black scarab
big as a Kafka protagonist
lay on its back on my staircase.

Hooked mandibles clicked,
ready to take a pound of flesh
and come back for seconds.

I could not bring myself to touch it.
I could not bring myself to kill it.
I stood on the porch, ashamed.


II.
It was two in the morning. I was six.
I fell asleep with Oliver Twist wanting more
and forgot to shut the screen.

A thump on the ceiling. I woke
to a stag beetle orbiting the light
throwing fearful shadows.

Central vacuuming was made
for insect night terrors.
It was gone in an instant.

I never touched it. I never learned
its Latin name or what it saw
in the light bulb’s incandescent halo.


III.
We have to be taught to be afraid
of insects. It happens around
age six.


IV.
On a California Monday, I lurched
to a workday shower. Next to
the oatmeal soap, a water roach

as big as my hand waved
from the shower caddy.
My feminism spiraled down the drain.

I screamed like a six-year-old
until my husband came
to my rescue with a paper sack,

which sat on the porch rustling for weeks.
Neither of us could bear to touch it, even with Doc Martens.
It eventually starved to death.


V.
This newest invader is helpless, tipped
on its back on the stairs, legs waving
obscure bug semaphore.

It couldn’t flip itself over, levering
its carapace against the ground. It must have gone
crazy, gotten sick, wanted to die.

Please tell me it wanted to die.
Please tell me I didn’t let it die
because I was afraid.


VI.
We have to be taught to be afraid
of each other. It happens
every night at six and eleven.


VII.
I walked past the black scarab twice
before admitting it would go nowhere on its own,
would not fly to haunt some other set of stairs.

I tipped it over with a cardboard box I pulled
from the trash, just barely far enough
from fear. It fell

down one more step
toward the second floor, stopped
moving at all.


VIII.
Was I wrong to disturb the order
of small monsters—the mercy boot,
the oubliette of the vacuum bag?

Was it learning some invaluable
depth of suffering to bleed out
in helpless beauty?

Does the scarab understand
why it should fear the thousand portraits
painted on its compound eye?


IX.
Is it wrong to wish
we’d been taught rescue
instead of fear?

Is it wrong to wish
I’d held it
in my hand?

Lea C. Deschenes resides in Worcester, MA and holds an MFA in Poetry from New England College. Her poetry has appeared online, on stage and in print (Spillway, Snakeskin, So Luminous the Wildflowers, Ballard Street Poetry Journal, et al.)

A former member of four National Poetry Slam teams and a coach to two more, she also dusts off her BA in Theater to perform. She has received a Jacob Knight Award, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and represented Worcester in the 2005 Individual World Poetry Slam.

She is the author of thirteen chapbooks. Her first full-length collection The Constant Velocity of Trains is available through Write Bloody Publishing.

All Things Considered

The Taurus engine coughs, reluctant. I flick
the radio’s switch while it warms into evening
news, a clip about Ben Franklin’s Deist leanings, his god
who pressed a button and adjourned for eternity.

How did Franklin honor that? Did
he fly his kite awestruck by it’s watch-fob
connection to ticking spheres?

The story ends and your familiar baritone
smooths piston-clank with its glissando,
elevating to an enthusiastic clip—an interview taped
in your latest car, a lineage of much-rolled odometers.
Prerecorded: broadcast echo you’ve already vacated.

I roll out for groceries as the segment ends with a song:
Everyone gone, up into the light. Amen. How are you
doing out there? Did you find a hybrid car or switch
to bio-diesel? But then my mind fills with traffic and five-thirty war
reports, foraging for a decent parking space.
Inside: green tea, onions, castile soap, the search
for affordable cuts of meat, fabric softener
that doesn’t make me itch. Waiting
in line with my cart to checkout, I wonder

how one honors the cog’s missing tooth—
synchronicity throwing sand in the gears
of the great machine. Driving home, the stopwatch
of the evening news sweeps on—your song, the founding
father swallowed by stock tallies and side effects
of today’s new miracle drug.

My anonymous ear, your fleeting voice
dissolve in brand-name buyouts and golden
orioles perched by the driveway as I return
with goat cheese, a baguette, merlot. The stilled
engine ticks as it cools.

I gather my bags, wonder how you are, then
head upstairs to add rosemary
to the olive tapenade.

David R. Surette’s new book of poetry is Easy to Keep, Hard to Keep In published by Koenisha.  They published his first book Young Gentlemen’s School in 2004. Surette’s poems have been published in literary journals such as Peregrine and Salamander and appear in the anthologies French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets; Cadence of Hooves: A Celebration of Horses; and Look! Up In The Sky! - An Anthology of Comic Book Poetry.  He is an instructor at the Cape Cod Writing Conference and a contributing editor at Salamander. He co-host Poetribe, a poetry series in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts where he also teaches.

HOCKEY

                        How the worn jersey of time unravels

                                                ~Thomas O’Grady

My brother lies on a gurney

in the catacombs of the Boston Arena,

a lightening bolt gash over his right eye.

A medical student with an accent stands over him,

an open medical book,

How to Suture.  He tugs the needle and thread through

Steve’s skin, no anesthesia, no complaints,

except “Hurry, I don’t want to miss the whole period.”

A Somerville High fan

unhappy at the goals I scored

against them last time, calls the rink

to tell my coach that my parents

are dead - a car accident on the way to the game -

because who would play then?

It was a lie exposed by the sight of my parents already in their seats,

my dad watching warm-ups, checking the goalie’s weaknesses,

my mother wishing we played a gentler game.

I drag my son from his bed at 6 am,

knowing I can have him in his gear

before he’s awake enough to protest,

believing when he slides that puck

under the prone goalie it will be enough,

a promise life can’t take back.

He quit when he got the chance.

David R. Surette

A Quilt

I’m pulling up the comforter. An anonymous official warns we could use nuclear weapons, a preemptive strike. The quilt I’m spreading was made by my husband’s three sisters, a gesture of love for his marriage to a woman so different from them she might as well have come from an alien world. The quilt is patched, appliqued, embroidered; its tiny stitches taken by hands used to diapering babies, scrubbing floors, paring vegetables, kneading dough. The news grows worse each hour. A gray train of cumulus over the northern horizon is turning rose.

This moment is cold and precious

as a sliver of ice in the mouth

of someone dying of thirst.

This poem, A Quilt, appeared in the Winter '07-08 Issue of Beloit Poetry Journal.

Sandra Kohler was born in New York City in 1940. She attended public schools there, Mount Holyoke College (A.B., 1961) and Bryn Mawr College (A.M., 1966 and Ph.D., 1971). From 1969 to 1976 she taught in the English department at Bryn Mawr College. Since then, she has taught literature and writing courses at levels ranging from elementary school to university and adult education. Her poems have appeared over the past twenty years in The New Republic, The Southern Review, Poetry Now, Calyx, 5 AM, Sojourner,  Sou'wester, Flyway, The Notre Dame Review, Countermeasures, Prairie Schooner, The Women's Review of Books, The Louisville Review, The Gettysburg Review, The American Poetry Review, and other periodicals. In 1985 and again in 1990, she was the recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry awarded by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her first book of poems, The Country of Women, was published in July, 1995 by Calyx Books. A second collection, The Ceremonies of Longing, was the winner of the 2002 Associated Writing Programs Award Series in Poetry, and was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in November, 2003. Recently she has been a "featured" poet in Diner, Natural Bridge, and The Missouri Review. After spending several decades of her adult life in different parts of Pennsylvania, she moved to the Dorchester section of Boston in the summer of 2006.