noteworthy
In each issue, the editors choose a writer they would like to bring
to the readers' attention.In this issue, poet Aimee Mackovic is highlighted.
Aimee Mackovic’s poems map out the strange territories of relationships. “…my heart / simply craves a good splat…” she writes. And does so in a singular and humorous tone that often arrives on the other side of a tight-rope: “Seems I like the yet better than / the doing, or the after.” When addressing a city, New York City in this case, Mackovic balances the humorous and the serious as she makes her way to poem’s fierce end: “…New York, I don’t miss how you stained / me with your ink. How can blood be missed by the vein?” Tight-rope walking, let’s watch Mackovic’s poems as they make it to the other side.
Confessions of a Love Junky
Happy Diary
Self-Portrait, circa the late '80s
Principles of the Universe
Picture of Tulip in Snow
What I Like and Don't Like
What I Wanted to Say
Nostalgia: NYC
Bolt of Lightning
Criminal
My heart is a whorish beast
roaming dark.
Slick thief, it lives to flex
for the spark
of engagement, loves to curl
itself around smooth
words, wanton eyes,
the deliciously barbed pangs
of soured memories
that liquidate and roll unchecked
down the scoffing cheek. Hoarder
of compliments, my heart
simply craves a good splat,
so bullheaded in the insistence
of riding the edge. An over-ripe
pomegranate, split open, so
frivolous with the scattering,
the offering
of its treasured seeds.
my nephew’s peanut butter-covered fingers, his awkward high
five that misses my hand but not my heart. * apple pie
and my tongue and ice cream mixed just right *
the warm, drizzled swatch of sunlight
draped lightly over my sleeping dog’s stomach and thighs *
letting the ocean air and water cleanse me, fry and dry
my hair to a delicious crisp * a fight
that binds * Christmas lights puncturing a twilight
so quietly everything shatters * a summer night
overflowing with heat and moon * a neatly tied bow ties,
one undone by passion * wind chimes * the white
and absolute black of a poem on a page * the wink of eye
that takes all my chinks of broken pieces inside
me and puts them together again quick, on the fly
Self-Portrait, circa the late '80s
defiler of red converse high-top sneakers
with ancient adolescent hieroglyphics; paint pen
graffiti artist; mailer of now obsolete post cards and letters;
food court connoisseur; beneficiary of summer vacations
that spanned lifetimes; brazen spinner of empty bottles
and cinnamon Binaca aficionado; puddle dancer;
roller-skating expert and frequenter of malls, school dances
that were our universe; star and moon hungry;
human turnstile of crushes and friendships; passer of notes
written in pink ink; dotter of the letter i with hearts;
possessor of a 5 speed I rode helmet-free; soldier in the war
of uniqueness versus the latest fad; girl band guru;
pounder of typewriter keys that spelled out dreams that stained
and smudged worse than ink; smuggler of contraband
cassette tapes; lyric memorizer and addict; temporary inhabitant
of the kingdom of clean slates and do-overs.
Fact: the principles of Biology state a drop
of blood, such as the ones you left
on the road, contain the all of us.
Biochemistry teaches us alcohol mixed
with a thumping base beat mixed with sweat
equals twilight plus flesh, like the chunks
of flesh the gravel caught yards away
from the mangled bike. Fact: Thermodynamics
is the principle that allows my car to overtake
the big rigs on the highway, quick to break
in your driveway. Fact: Chemistry demands
two chemicals that touch must not
stay the same. Fact: you wanted me to stay.
Attraction and Reciprocation: the taking off
of my shoes to do so. These are the principles.
~for Beth
Fuck, you say, I’ll just donate my body
to science. 300,000 dollar spine and all.
I try some stupid words
that cover you like flimsy cheesecloth.
New Hampshire. March. Outside, a budding tulip
is daring the winter to take it down.
Blood red petals smearing the surrounding snow
in fury, in bravery, in stunning defiance.
The kind of act that prompts
a picture, a picture that will remain
after the roots have been choked dry,
the pedals have given up,
a picture I imagine framed, like any great moment,
on your nightstand, next to
the mess of medicine bottles
that tether your tender flesh, a picture that has
the blazing audacity to outlast
everything.
I like being appropriate
but not all of the time.
~Philip Schultz
I love the divine possibility masked in a tube
of nude lip gloss, the high of coating my lips
before a date but not using lip liner. Never
liked having to stay within any line. I like
the music of an autumn night storm, turning off
the lights, then tilting the blinds just so,
so that I can watch the hard splish-splash
of the fat raindrops on the concrete, little martyrs
illuminated by street lights as they fall. I like
to see without looking directly. l admire the harsh
bite of a truth that frees, though salving my wounds
I do not. This is why I do not eat ice cream
after a breakup. I like to throw myself
all gawk and raw edges, into the tiniest smidge
of love, just to see if I will fit, see if I can stretch
it out of shape. I usually don't fit -- that I don't like.
I thrill at a haberdashery, like running amok in things
yet to be built -- the fabrics, the zippers, the pins,
the paper patterns. Seems I like the yet better than
the doing, or the after. I no longer like to sew
by machine or by hand. I like a good, thick milkshake
in summertime, one with lumps that ruin
the straw. I would like to be that straw. What's not to like
in being sacrificed to such sweet and naïve forces?
You: {eyes dagger blue, swallow
me} so, what's your story? Me: {bones
howl, volcano heart} words, words
strike us like invisible lightning, hot
charge gone, and never gone.
my compass, my mercurial lens.
you are my story, my every line
smudged ugly with ink I scrawl
on thirsty, sacrificed paper.
you have ruined every star fire
that does not
taste of our lips grasping, does
not reek of our reckless
wanton limbs always, does not
rip me thoroughly
with your lush dynamite whispers.
No, I don't ache for New York City at all,
ambition and discipline thick in air gut
punching you daily. I don’t miss the shrill calls
of the sirens at night, how the sunset would strut
in, rupture itself upon the skyscrapers, light up
the windows, in the fire and ice. No, I don’t miss
hanging out on my fire escape balcony, Dixie cup
full of cheap wine, talking with best friends, blissed
by nothing and everything, the anxious GW Bridge
chiming in, all flutter and surge, I don’t miss nights
lost to the dive bars of the Village, flitting like a midge
in skin sewn from a drowsy underground fighting
to extinguish itself. New York, I don’t miss how you stained
me with your ink. How can blood be missed by the vein?
~for John Z., dating again
She drinks Johnnie Walker Black neat,
and is from New Jersey
for god’s sake, you write, we met
in our loss of spouse support group.
They say the odds of getting struck
by lightning are one I three thousand,
and you got struck
twice in a lifetime.
In my century,
one grapples to find and hold on to love
as a child thinks
it can hold on to a fist full of sand, watching
the sand slip though naïve fingers,
leaving a rough grain or two,
the child looking on, wondering
why the sand won’t stay.
Your giddiness is like a plague. She and I
have been struck.
Can’t stand to be apart, you write.
Like the way the ocean can’t stand
to be away from the shore,
the way a bolt of lightning
can’t stand to be so close
to the ground and not
strike.
~”I became a criminal when I fell in love.” Louise Gluck
I like wrapping your name around my tongue,
taking it everywhere with me
against your will. I soak up your touch
like a droughted plain devours
the unsuspecting rain so painfully
it feels divine. Once you were sleeping—
eyelids dream-heavy, lips taut and plump—
my corneas stole you to the back of my brain,
locked you up, no no no you will never
be let out of that sweet prison.
You made
a criminal of me. Your love I wear
like a poised noose, like a needle plunders
a vein, like a pistol kissing temple, life
sentence from which I desire no chance
of parole.
Aimee Mackovic earned her BA from Wake Forest University and her MFA from Spalding University. Her work has appeared in Elephant Journal, Main Street Rag, Blood Lotus, and The Cresset, among others. She has poems in two anthologies: Bigger Than They Appear (Accents Press) and di-verse-city (Austin International Poetry Festival). Her chapbook, A Sentenced Woman, was published by Finishing Line Press. She lives in Austin, TX with her three-legged rescue chihuahua.
