Jamie Fleming – Page 7 – Novus Literary and Arts Journal

Among the Storm

Written by Grant Young. Posted in Poetry.

You build a home

among the torrents

I watch you in the deep end.

You were not born

in this storm – it hijacked

You and proliferated, raised

its children in Your lungs

to take the wind out.

A storm isn’t normally

the antithesis to wind.

A storm doesn’t normally

whitewash Tacoma, or the streets

leading from church to home

stalking Manuel Ellis

to take the wind out of his lungs.

A storm doesn’t normally

bring riots, though maybe storms should,

or maybe there shouldn’t have to be

a storm

for us to riot.

In this storm, hail cannons

down like rubber bullets

while forest fires

pepper spray the West.

A thrown water bottle

becomes a line of riot shields

charging into umbrella defenses.

The storm comes from all directions now and

my dog, my house, my street,

my 11th and Pine, my Seattle

does not sleep at night.

How can this be place for home?

You teach me about trees:

how they exchange nitrogen

among root networks,

nourishing one another.

How when danger pierces bark,

chemicals communicate hostility,

floating through the air as if

a smoke signal became pheromones.

How the sturdiest Sitka spruces

stand tall amongst forest fires

and remain alive.

We can do more than simply remain

You tell me. You reach a hand to me

and with gracious gritty grip

pull me along. You take me

to the beach and make me cake.

You tell me this storm is in all of us,

but we can take shelter

in each other.

So we build a home

in a gale-less storm

on this obsidian

edge of time.

We fashion a hull of

thick steel and a Sitka

spruce mast. People

are windless, but You puff

our canvas sails with Your stormed lungs.

We puzzle over 5000 pieces of

I love you

into a painting of a family

with a dog who’s too cute.

Together, we do more

than simply remain

in the space You created for

our home among the storm.

Southern Cross

Written by Diane Thiel. Posted in Poetry.

It wasn’t what drew me there,

but when I saw the Southern Cross

that year, visible all night down under,

turning with the hour,

it took me home, to my childhood

when I didn’t quite realize

what had risen

just above the horizon,

but I knew enough to know

I could keep that starry kite

if even for a little while

up above the boundary line.

I didn’t know it then, how special

the sighting was, my place in the world

far south enough to see it,

my hometown floating on the edge.

People looked right at the cross

and didn’t seem to notice

it was there

before it dipped below again.

Almost like a secret, that made it mine.

It was something I could turn to,

away from all the trouble,

and call my own.

Novus Interview with Anders Carlson-Wee

Written by Jamie Fleming. Posted in News.

Anders Carlson-Wee is the author of THE LOW PASSIONS (W.W. Norton, 2019), a New York Public Library Book Group Selection, and DYNAMITE (Bull City Press, 2015), winner of the Frost Place Chapbook Prize. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, BuzzFeed, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Sun, New England Review, The Southern Review, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and many other publications. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writers, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, he is the winner of the 2017 Poetry International Prize. His work has been translated into Chinese. Anders holds an MFA from Vanderbilt University and is represented by Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents.

Wax Lips

Written by Brian Yapko. Posted in Featured, Poetry.

shirtlesss

seven maybe eight

swigging

lemonade maybe coke

climbing

a maple maybe a jungle jim

eating

mud maybe pez

bawling

my room maybe the basement

parents

shouting maybe screaming

angry

staying together maybe not

hiding

the bed maybe the closet

grown up

forgiving maybe not

wishing

i could again view the world

barefoot,

frog in my pocket

bactine on my knee

chewing on wax lips

FUTURE INSTRUCTION MANUAL: On Justice

Written by Thad DeVassie. Posted in Featured, Poetry.

Blindfolded // she’s been molded into and out of systems of loopholes and bureaucracy // corruption and special interests // a more than occasional rush to judgment // leading to injustice // her antithesis // within justice is word play // just/ice // a metaphor for coldness in the belief that what was handed down was somehow just // righteous // this is no game. lady // and Lady Justice is no lady // at least no longer as you might define it // stronger than the chains // the cuffs // the zip ties that bind // mightier as she drops the scales from her hands and eyes // and simultaneously spies what is just // no longer our bronzed statue // a blind-frozen bust of trust in a system that, by the evidence presented, can no longer be trusted // Lady Justice on the move is not to be confused with on the take // follow her // follow her into the hood and the holler // places urban and suburban // into cities where bigotries fester // she is nobody’s monument // not standing for the standard binary // not him and them // neither he nor she but we // not black nor white or even bronze // but a color you can’t quite put your finger on // unable to tip her newly balanced scales // follow her // which is to say you, us, and for all // pay close attention for hers is the new face of conviction.

Windmills

Written by Amanda Owens. Posted in Uncategorized.

Snow white windmills turn lazily on

the mountain top, typically blocked by haze.

Mountains form a giant sloping bowl.

Some people call it nuclear soup

others say we are protected by a bubble, radioactive.

Go to Hill Top when the sun goes down, where Joey’s vigil took place.

There the city’s lights outshine the stars above.

A forgotten city amongst the trees, tucked

down in the mountains.

The city’s borders never move an inch.

This poem is excerpted from “The Manhattan Project,” a chapbook manuscript depicting the locale and history of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Known as “The City Behind the Fence” and “The Secret City,” Oak Ridge was the home of the atomic bomb and about 30,000 citizens of multigenerational families: a city laid in the shadow of the horrific events from World War II. Using found information, reference material, and personal narrative, the poems from this manuscript have been constructed to detail the city’s history, mystery and cynicism. The speaker’s voice is the voice of the city.

Author: Grant Young