(respond) volume 1, issue 1
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(respond)
(respond) volume 1 issue 1
A QUARTERLY ZINE OF POEMS SPUN FROM ONE-WORD PROMPTS
Anyone can join this experiment. Prompts are offered on my blog.
A huge thanks goes out to all the contributors.
If you know people who might want to contribute
to future issues of (respond), please pass along
my website and blog:
www.benjamin-arnold.com
www.benjamin-arnold.com/blog
Also if you know of artists who want to help
design future issues, please have them contact me
benjamin.arnold26@gmail.com
Thanks again! Write on—
Benjamin Arnold, editor & publisher
Throw up your barricade here!
Build a bulwark of brethren bones and tattered banners,
We are the patchwork army;
Mended armors, reforged swords,
Glued together at the edges of our paper mache hearts,
Ready to break open for our cause again;
All the king's horses...
All the king's men...
Griffin-Ashe Peralta
A pompous person
is not pompous
just proud of what little they do know
Troy Cavins
We were wilting roses.
We used to be those quiet girls,
all pig tails, and jumpers,
learned to play Hide N’ Seek inside of my own body,
loved cool mud smeared across pink cheeks,
Pretty was something the sky gave birth to,
nothing that lived inside us, or bloomed vibrant
thin skin, small hands
were trophies to his broken mirror mouth,
My little sister has become a willing ghost,
we stopped worshiping the same false gods,
fled as though she’d been set on fire,
she blamed my Molotov cocktail speech,
she learned to disappear at the bottom of bottles,
I wonder if she remembers how it used to be us against the world,
damn the world for punishing innocence, for being so cruel
I miss the swarm of her voice, cool crackle-half smile
photographs are my only memory of her face,
I wonder if she can feel my heart breaking a little more every day in her absence.
Jennifer E. Hudgens
alacrity
I will attempt, with pure alacrity, to slam the day with happy ways...
no wait.. maybe a slow approach would be the better boast..
instill a warmth of hello to a friend.... then dance on the cracks
that cover the sidewalks with a grin..
or perhaps this moment should be kept still ... but that would not work
...if i followed the word's will...
so there we have it .. once more to the wind..
the toast is ready... the coffee is too...
slip sideways through time ... without your shoes
Mitch Bensel
Alacrity.
I am always the first person in a crowd to start clapping
and the very last to stop.
I'd pound my hands together till the skin peeled off, the blood dried up,
and the bones ground to dust if I thought you'd know your greatness
from my effort.
But you don't listen to all that anyways.
You always want to run from the spotlight like you're not deserving
of a million eye balls all affixed on you.
My whole being affixes on you.
It's not just my vision; I swear I can tell which way is North
by checking the angle of my arm hairs.
So maybe I'm just a metal chip in a freeform bowl, magnetic, l
ike a thousand thousand others,
But that makes you true north,
And I've never believed anything harder than all that...
Griffin-Ashe Peralta
your euphony
beauty
kindness and love
you caught me with a good pluck of your strings
your terpsichorean nature can almost be seen just in your eyes
what a mistake.
first, we were crafted together.
you liked to say "dovetail'd"
because it was such a lovely word
and yet, really, your drilling into my life
deucedly corrupting every shadow
in sonorous rhythm
in daven
you make me ill
then you melt my cough drop
like beatles crawling in places that no thing should ever utter a whisper
in daven
Troy Cavins
The gentleman thought her a lamb,
all soft curves and gentle sighs,
asking questions beginning with, “May I?”
He tilted her chin up
and found to his surprise,
that there was a wolf lurking in her eyes.
Could he tame such a beast?
Dare he even try?
Or should he just point out the lie?
“You are no lamb, my dear,” said he.
“Then what am I, Sir?” said she.
“A semblance of a sheep indeed,
but a wolf lies underneath. You wear
wool over your own eyes, denying
who you are without even trying
to see if you truly are beneath me.
Perhaps we are equals?”
Her eyes flickered—had she not known?
But then she sighed and let out a soft moan.
“Have I been so weak? Why haven’t I seen?”
“Others would take advantage of you, but I
am not so mean. I’ll nurture you into the
woman you are meant to be. Do you accept?”
“Teach me, please.”
Karley Pardue
Alacrity
The waitress is wearing slim black, her hair done up
in a bun, beautiful and smiling.
She’s ready for drinks:
A Martini, if husband would like;
Perhaps a Cosmopolitan for wife. Unaware
there will soon be an offer on the table.
A drop of eyes signal it.
A lateral shift of body language.
There are 20 years of staling marriage. Of kids,
and endless exhaustion sandwiched between
tiny moments of rare, gossamer joy.
Some bourbon will smooth the edge;
A Manhattan perhaps for her.
And when he proposes to her, smilingly she agrees.
It is the first moment, in so many long years,
she has surprised him.
Robert Judge Woerheide
encomium.
wait..
am I doin' this right?
maybe I should read this.
Chad Sorg
NIC at Night
Heart pounding you stand facing the wall,
You are one in a line of soldiers in the trench.
You've received the briefing,
But somehow this seems completely different.
Are you nervous or excited?
It is hard to tell.
The lights go out and your vision goes dark.
It takes a few moments for your eyes to adjust,
Above you is the beautiful night sky.
The stars softly illuminate the soldiers next to you.
Is he nervous or excited?
It is hard to tell.
"READY!" the drill sergeant shouts.
Your heart beats faster as you set your weapon on the ground above,
Finding a hand hold, you realize all talking has stopped.
Are we nervous or excited?
It is hard to tell.
"UP!"
You hoist yourself up over the ledge,
Extending a hand, you help your battle buddy up.
Grabbing your weapon, you look down range.
Before you is a field of barbed wire,
Low boxes are scattered about.
At the end stand three tall towers,
Each holding life threatening danger.
Are you nervous or excited?
It is hard to tell.
Suddenly the cracks of three M240B's cut the air.
Tracers light up the night sky, leaving red trails in their wake.
Live life-taking ammunition flies above you.
The low box nearby blinds you with a simulated explosion.
Are you nervous or excited?
Now, you don't really care.
Mathew Groenewold
The horizon with real ground in the foreground
and none that we can see above the line at dusk
is my favorite moment of balance
after the semblance of sunset,
before the semblance of sunrise.
It's all light of stars in our eyes,
including the moon whose reflection
is just its rejection of the sun
passing the gift along to us as orbits allow.
The dark side of the moon is no semblance;
it is a fact in which we lose faith,
and when we don't believe there's real ground
in night's dark background, we render it the first ring of hell.
I find myself listening to the note of earth
bowing across the circumference of dusk,
a violin sustaining one note of dawn to come
as light follows the dissolving line of dark,
the balanced shadow of earth’s n/ever closing eye
that I cannot follow except in in the flashes
of synapses in the canyons of my brain.
Brendon Cesmat
slowly you rose from our bed..
you stirred the air with a whisper
... I inhaled deeply
would your whisper find me..
could I possibly taste the air of your exhale..
.. lazily I watched ..you
dreamily I ached for you...
I pushed.. into the air ..with a wish
no boundaries to stop..to slow
no wish for any semblance of sanity
crazily I lept from our bed..
and tasted your whisper...
Mitch Bensel
[mjuziəm hæʃ]
A brushstroke semblance of sanity.
A docent guided tour of below-cost-of-living living.
In what has become my spare time
I'm still assembling
the phonetics and the phonology.
The sounds of
6 days a week,
And theories about their patterning.
Cameron Rees
NIC at Night
Heart pounding you stand facing the wall,
You are one in a line of soldiers in the trench.
You've received the briefing,
But somehow this seems completely different.
Are you nervous or excited?
It is hard to tell.
The lights go out and your vision goes dark.
It takes a few moments for your eyes to adjust,
Above you is the beautiful night sky.
The stars softly illuminate the soldiers next to you.
Is he nervous or excited?
It is hard to tell.
"READY!" the drill sergeant shouts.
Your heart beats faster as you set your weapon on the ground above,
Finding a hand hold, you realize all talking has stopped.
Are we nervous or excited?
It is hard to tell.
"UP!"
You hoist yourself up over the ledge,
Extending a hand, you help your battle buddy up.
Grabbing your weapon, you look down range.
Before you is a field of barbed wire,
Low boxes are scattered about.
At the end stand three tall towers,
Each holding life threatening danger.
Are you nervous or excited?
It is hard to tell.
Suddenly the cracks of three M240B's cut the air.
Tracers light up the night sky, leaving red trails in their wake.
Live life-taking ammunition flies above you.
The low box nearby blinds you with a simulated explosion.
Are you nervous or excited?
Now, you don't really care.
Mathew Groenewold
Humility
Joy used to be something seeping from pores,
We have made chores of waking up, of being lonely
Miracles die upon every expansion of lungs,
Laughter flung dreams into madness,
Hurried to succeed,
we crawl like pathogens,
Worried of failure,
We chase the sky for fresh oxygen,
we scatter like rats,
Ashamed of our shadow,
Hearts tattered with kindness,
Our sadness invested into lost hours,
We are creators of this universe,
We decide what is broken, regardless of curses we leave buried in our bone.
Jennifer E. Hudgens
Tonight, I do alacrity lack.
I am monochromatic and pregnant with phlegm.
The hack vomits from my intermittently purring lungs
like a leprous seal dislodging its uvula.
My face is peppered unevenly
with edema
and yesterday's flaking mascara.
and my expression
Is inhibited.
Worn.
under exhaustion's heavy garb.
With my pillows properly propping
I shall drift into a scattered sleep
waking
to the tussive tantrums
of this vile but temporary guest.
Jill Marlene
She simply appeared.
Fifty-nine minutes before sunrise.
We left the pavement,
headed west before reveille.
Paul Fenkell
dilute
dye loot
d i l u t e
die lute
playing dice for another grain of rice
dispute
repute the mute strumming a lute for a hoot of his cousin's medical bills
primaveral euphony in a world where everything is tertiary
or nothing
depending on whether or not you live in the box
no, not a house
your mind
do you live in your mind? Or do you live in the space that you occupy?
deny.
Troy Cavins
I want to be diluted
Undisputed in the
Way that I am.
I want to be thinner
A winner who won
By losing all that she was.
I want to fade away into nothing
Something that speaks to me
In shadows saying, “Who are you?”
I want to decrease until
I cease to be anything other
Than what used to be me.
I want to go away
But stay the same person
That I am today.
I want to vanish away
Fat and that is what
Made me what I am.
Who am I? I wonder if
I’m a blunder of a girl
Still figuring out the truth.
Karley Pardue
Flexible Rubber Coating:
(seals leaks and cracks instantly).
I’m willing
To be water tight,
And eager to stop rust.
Progress forks constantly.
Scrapes open rapidly.
Resolutions come breathlessly.
The clock felt it,
But fuller rotations are in force.
Or: some things take awhile,
But I’m elbow-greasing furiously.
There’s a some-risk repeat trial offer in the ether.
The pipes are humming.
Cameron Rees
effervescence
quench consequence
in a pinch,
your thumbs are your synapse, greedily feeding your brain
Dopamine
a drug
for what?
another day, another effervescent bubbling solid mask
without my addiction
I'd probably be lying in a casket with rope burns around my neck
Troy Cavins
Dear alacrity,
I so wanted to write an ode in your honor, a lilting lyric to lift my
spirit.
Alas, I confess I lack the clarity. Muddy is my vision.
Your vivacity has escaped me. Perhaps he ran away with allegro?
I always did have a “thing” for allegro. He is so gay, after all.
This sucks. Really, it does.
I am out of my element, uncomfortable and squirming.
Why couldn’t you be high “C”!
Sigh. You are a-lac-ri-ty.
And, I---
I am your overzealous ambiance.
Sincerely yours,
legato
Heather Miley
He deliberates from the bottom left corner of his lips.
And the band low-pitches into buzzing constellations
at his request.
And all those uncorked steps bring back memories
of a different man.
One who didn’t really love me.
He cleaned used cars on weekdays.
He DJ’d dead clubs on replay.
He lived across the bay from me in West Seattle.,
and that might explain why his face looked salty.
I came into his life after leaving No-town
Following an unrelated parting of ways and the imminent melt down.
For months we kissed liplessly
and I danced underaged at Bear Bars
while he spun 80’s digitalia and avoided direct eye contact
He hasn’t sent me a shooting star since.
Now that we’re on the subject,
I can’t help but think of the Epidemiologist:
All stoicism and knee-high blue dress socks.
A man who knew where the needle started,
but had no clue where the orbit stopped.
He shares a satellite's viewpoint
with a healthy dose of blast off.
And they all inhabit
concentric circles of my own twisting fibers.
Webbing systems of lamplit, cosmic nucleotides,
casting galaxies of moon-sized shadows
on my own self-rocketed apogee.
For them, and for myself, and for the uppercut,
I cast affections into the vacuum.
In hopes that their spinning
will never simply
just burn up.
Cameron Rees
Apogee
the Madcap
dropped his cap
and put it back on again
looks up at the apogee
"gee, what a mighty fine ring our Earth is wearing!"
"what Earth?"
"the one in my cap."
he responded to himself, dropping the cap in a garbage can.
insouciance
shilly-shally
willy-wally
billy-bally boo
succinct
epexegesis
I guess he's not very succinct then…
Troy Cavins
A Poem For Past Lovers
I’m now living out off the highway
some miles north and 500 feet above the city.
I’ve still got only a handful more stars in the sky
than I did by the high school with the field lights.
And so I think about a man
who knew me and said spectacularly filthy things.
Now he’s down in Mississippi
running marching drills for college bands.
They blast sweet, corkscrew notes.
The field unfolds like a honeybee’s dance mat.
I want to shout, "Get fit! Get it right here!"
walking up & down the aisles of my stadium-mind.
All the fans have come for my melt down.
My wife sits near the exit
while our children are on the 50-yard line.
Faces of past employers pepper the crowd.
"Fresh hot ambition, right heeere!" I hawk,
my voice growing hoarse trying not to sink
into the rising distraction, indifference & competition
from desperate albeit fresher vendors nearby.
And I'm distracted by my better angel on the field.
Everytime I look, he's on D,
or it's 3rd & long from his own 20.
A strange face, a wave from the center of the row,
my throw right on and they pass the buck my way.
"Pathetic," my brother broadcasts, from press box,
"He threw it away again." And the crowd turns ugly.
Brandon Cesmat
Fits Fights (An Intentional Title)
Doubt doubled down,
like I caught my cascade, but then rung it out.
Like laundry folded in an earthquake.
Schlitz and Long Hours:
They’re buddy cops.
One plays by the rules.
One made a mess in midtown,
But they get results, goddammit.
Cameron Rees
Conniption
Go ahead and change as you see fit.
Take my lines and make them yours.
Infuse your meaning over mine.
Keep me caged inside your box; your point of view.
Did I miss something? When did poetry become a stomping ground of
right and wrong?
I prefer my edges blurred, such as life.
I wrote you a letter. You sent me a sonnet.
Prefer to go another round? Show me your haiku!
Heather Miley
My wallet is empty, it’s lost somewhere inside my room,
Inside my head, there is a ticking time bomb,
I can’t find my glasses, they never left my face
My exhaust exploded on my Cadillac, there is nothing but static buzzing
On my earlobes,
I hated kissing him, he tasted like too much red wine and self-loathing,
He marked me, a plot of land he conquered, I maniacally scrubbed at my
shame,
I drank too many energy drinks, my chest started caving,
I can’t keep up with the noise, anymore
Pride swallowed tastes bitter, lucky for me I like to drink blood of honey
bears,
I suck them dry, the way lovers suck me dry,
We are all a cyclone of Karma, and misgivings,
We are panic attack, sweaty palms, broken hearts,
I am tired of being a skeleton key to an already picked lock,
We are all skeletons dancing in someone else’s closet,
No more hiding, no more breaking, let’s find the calm, and slow dance.
Jennifer Hudgens
You’re never too far
away.
You’re always within reach
but just out of
touch.
We used to be togetherneverapart
but then fate/destiny/pride/truth tore us
in two.
I still revolve around you.
You may not know it, because I don’t know
if you revolve around me.
I’m far
away.
But still thisclose
whenever I think of you.
Karley Pardue
I am further than I ever wanted to be
from the truth, from life and from the very essence of myself.
Scratch, claw...even bite for your innocence, but you will not be restored.
It is a finite struggle that begins with death and ends in sudden realization -
that we are all caught in orbit, locked at the point of apogee.
Out of reach.
Zachary Valladon
It never comes.
You never get there.
You never get to look down on it all.
There's never cause enough to go,
and never balls enough to stay.
The only ones who've ever been
are those who never came back.
Dan Wexelblatt
A Circumstantial Conniption
Charles knew what would
come of this encounter with
Countess Daria of
Calcutta.
Of course she would want him to
order the finest wines and fruits
or else she would be unhappy
or possibly angry (he could never tell).
Not that he would think of disobeying her.
Not even if his life depended on it.
No, she was a woman to fear or it was all for
naught.
Nobody knew of this affair with the countess.
Nobody would tell his wife anyways,
not if they valued their positions and possessions.
No, they would keep their mouths shut (he hoped).
“I must prepare for the Countess,” he said to his manservant.
“I wouldn’t want for her to come in and see me
in this state of undress. It might make her
ill.”
“Please sir, take a seat,” said the Countess, appearing from the
panel in the wall that served such
purposes as the one she was about to do.
“Perhaps it would be best if you shut your yammer.”
“Tell me what is the meaning of this!” Charles asked,
terrified of what the woman held in her hands and the
trouble that it promised with its
trigger.
“I was about to,” she continued, calm and smiling.
“I know of your intentions to bed me this evening and
I do not approve of the motives behind them.
It speaks little of your intelligence to underestimate me so.”
Oh, how his heart hammered in his chest!
Of all the scenarios he’d thought of this hadn’t been
one, and it brought such hatred toward the woman on the
ottoman.
“Now you will write a letter to your wife, explaining how you could
not take living an adulterous life any longer and will
not be returning home from this ill-advised trip,” the Countess said,
nodding to herself and readying the pistol.
“Can’t we talk about this?”
“Oh, what do you have to say?”
“Not even the stars are as beautiful as you.”
“Not even the worms could sink as low as you.”
“I will not go peacefully!”
“Please don’t; that would be a bore.”
“Try to at least show some humanity!”
“If I smile does that help?”
“Of course not!”
“Now, if you please, write your letter.”
“Can we just pretend this never happened?
“Of course we can’t, Charles.”
“Now what will you do to me?”
“Not listening, are we?”
“I don’t want to die.”
“Pity.”
“Tell me why you’re doing this!”
“I don’t like you.”
“Or maybe you like me too much.”
“No such thing for a man like you.”
Countess Daria held the pistol in
one hand, aimed it directly at Charles’
neck and
narrowed one eye in concentration.
Ignoring his whimpers, she
pulled the
trigger and repeated
it
one more time.
“Never mess with the Countess.”
Karley Pardue
past the cuckoo's nest
however, my wing was damaged mid-flight when I stopped for taffies
and there I landed
inside the cuckoo's nest
laying with the eggs that are not my mother's
they are not my unborn sisters
my unborn brothers
my unborn daughter
but I abort them anyway
whoever the fetuses belonged to
they weren't mine
and now there's plenty of space
inside my very own cuckoo nest
Troy Cavins
CONNIPTION
DYSLOGISTIC
YOUR WORD HOARD IS JUST AN ARSENAL
ARSON
SCRATCHING MY AMYGDALA WITH A STICK ON THE ROAD
YOU USED TO SWEAR WITH
AND STAB AND PROVOKE MY OWN FURY
IT'S A LITTLE HEAVY, THOUGH
YOU ARE SHAPED LIKE A BASIL LEAF
YOU HAVE THE SAME INTELLIGENCE AS THE SOLES ON MY
SHOES
YOUR FACE IS A PROPELLER. AND WHEN IT STOPS TURNING,
SO DOTH YOUR HEART STOPS BEATING
CUT THE WIRE. STOP THE PROPELLER
But never, never, stop spinning. Spin, through Alighieri's spinning inferno.
And then the gravity will make you fall in through the crevices
until you see eye to eye with satan himself
like you once did to me
leave me with the leaves
and the dirt
and the flesh of someone who isn't mine
or something
said Nobody, the man in my pupil, talking through my lens, into my vi-
sion, and into my brain
I clip my toenails with the edge of the quill
that I used to write your love letters with
which you hold so dearly
dearly enough to wipe your ass with
here I am, a thing
a Pink
and most certainly not a human
most certainly not a monster
most certainly not a bird
and yet, west I flew
I flew west
twisted with a thrust of adrenalin
forward... against my silence
not new to my soul.. but not welcomed
was my moment of conniption..
when first I saw...
... your body slumped against the wall
.. the air in the room ... stale.... and time
time .. crammed it's grip upon me
Mitch Bensel
Conniption
Perhaps some matriarch will apply
this vulgarity to men, a counterpart
to the womanly hysteric:
a condition needing treatment,
and coming to us from the Latin--
belonging to the womb.
For conniption, we could make wars possessive.
Or the preponderance for psychopathy,
affairs, abuse, and other manly pursuits.
A phallic, boyish fit. Like my one-year-old
perfecting his tantrum for mommy.
Or an argument over tax revenue.
Robert Judge Woerheide
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