2011 — The Monarch Review — Page 4
Wrong Way – Kevin McLellan
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 14:06 — 4 Comments
The waitress came from behind the bar and placed the coffee before them. Two porcelain cups on a marble tabletop. She even brought tiny crystal cups of sugar and cream with silver spoons. It was all very nice. The woman looked at the man who sat with her over the coffee. Or, rather, she regarded him. He wasn’t bad looking. He was older than she was, but not so much that it would ever trouble her, if it came to that. And there were his good cheekbones, plus hands strong and athletic, but, she concluded, without final shaping or finish. […]
Harps & Angels – Ricky Garni
Thursday, October 20, 2011 13:28 — 0 Comments
Harpo Marx had a hat. Harpo Marx had a wig. The wig was attached to the hat. You could tap the hat and it would collapse. The hair on the wig was blond and curly. You could put the hat and the wig on a stand and you would almost have Harpo Marx. Everyone knows Harpo Marx from his hat and his wig. Some people didn’t know it was a wig. You could laugh when you see the hat, because you would think of all the funny things that Harpo Marx did in a hat with a wig. By now, […]
I’m Sorry – Sam Katz
Tuesday, October 18, 2011 13:57 — 0 Comments
They told us about you in an email addressed to the community. Three paragraphs signed by the president of the university that seemed incredibly honest at the time. I had to read your name twice. I’d just seen you a few weeks before and my mind kerfuffled over the arithmetic of these two ideas. When it had settled again, I admit, I wasn’t devastated. The feeling was akin to recognizing the passage of time: I thought I should get on doing something with my life. I didn’t know you very well so it was like finding out a distant relative […]
Five Country Haiku – Victoria Jones
Monday, October 17, 2011 13:31 — 0 Comments
Under the sprinkler A robin stalks an earthworm I pray for them both
Break-In – Jed Myers
Thursday, October 13, 2011 13:13 — 0 Comments
Lodged in the deck door jamb, that vertical
Reasons For Concern – John Cravens
Tuesday, October 11, 2011 13:30 — 2 Comments
The young American couple was staying for a week in this far northwest county of Ireland in a self-catering cottage that had a fine view of the lough. The young man had come to the pier to be alone and to think, and he had been watching the men fishing for mackerel since before the day had begun quickly fading to evening. Several small cars were parked near the end of the pier where there was no barrier, and men were in front of the cars fishing. Some fished from the edge of the pier facing the breakwater. Beyond the […]
Aberfan, 1967 – Jim Brantingham
Monday, October 10, 2011 21:26 — 3 Comments
Ten months after the disaster at Abefan, I stood across the small valley and stared at the pile of coal slurry that killed 144 people—116 of them children. I tried to fathom a generation of children wiped out in just 5 minutes. A man made mountain, built over a spring, suddenly gave way burying a farmhouse and a school.
After The Raid – Gerald Solomon
Thursday, October 6, 2011 13:59 — 0 Comments
Dust, ashes, cracked glass, all that’s left from the fire.
Mary Laube
Tuesday, October 4, 2011 23:14 — 0 Comments
When I first saw Mary Laube’s paintings in Studio Visit (volume fourteen), they felt familiar in a way that I couldn’t put my finger on. At first they seemed occupied with formal explorations of depth and deception, geometric space, and intricate patterning. They are hard edged or “emotionally distant,” as Laube puts it, so they obliquely delve into their subject: home, or the complex of emotion, memory, and daydreaming that pervade the architecture of home. The void of narrative is filled by your own memory or daydreaming, because, as Gaston Bachelard mused in The Poetics of Space: “There exists for each one […]
Lady of the Waves – Jessica Karbowiak
Tuesday, October 4, 2011 14:26 — 2 Comments
On September 8, 1900 a fierce hurricane ripped through Galveston, Texas and killed more than 6,000 men, women and children. Among the dead were 90 children and 10 Catholic Sisters at the St. Mary’s Orphanage, despite the nuns’ efforts to save the children by securing them to their own bodies with clothesline. Only three boys and a hymn called “Queen of the Waves” survived from the orphan’s home. September 8, 1900 Early Morning/ St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum Lost children, orphans in walking quiet line, bookended by black-cloaked women of faith, up and into the dormitory. Single file as is the […]
The answer isn't poetry, but rather language
- Richard Kenney
