Camroc Press Review

Amber Rambharose

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Origins

Some days, it seems I’ve cut my teeth

on the trellis of your wrists, learned

language from the breaking of your body.

As if you have always been here. It is not

difficult to bear your weight, so much

less than whole. Your fractures ring

like rain into a well, my mouth, cliff

and chasm. Fingers dewed with awe,

you trace my waist, whisper into ribcage

the art of starving. Where other hands

have left their etchings you carve song

into clay, rhyme into the ruin of my body.

Picking Flowers

When he is forced to rifle through his wife, he thinks

of the tartness of little girl mouths and their resistant

sweetness. Not yet ripe, their kisses must be tempted

off the bough or twisted until relinquished. The pulp

of his daughters soaks spring into his fingers, trembles

on his tongue, makes his dreams pulse taut and tender.

If he could have a thousand daughters he would plant

them all beneath his bed and replace woman’s rankness

with their fragrant weeping. He does not know how long

he could watch them grow before descending to snap their

stems and bath his flesh in their terror and their honey.

Delicacies

I feel almost adult in this dull light. He sits beside me,

smooths my hair, wishing, perhaps, that I had worn

more jewelry. I order my dinner in high school French,

tongue skittering over the surface of the language. He

asks the waiter for a delicacy. When the bones are brought

to the table, already hewed into glistening halves, he takes

one up in his hands, laps at its sweetness. The sentiment

of this extraction is familiar to me. His fingers gleam

with grease as he beckons for my mouth to open, dollops

the richness between my lips. This too is familiar – sound

of bone breaking, almost silent groan of pleasure.

Coalescence

Almost night and city sweats to cool

itself. Spires blur up, ribboning, like mist

off of a fountain. The brittle sky is casting

bones and my body bends in answer, bare

feet patterned with pitch, cross-hatched

and asphalt-pocked from hours roof-side.

In half-light my skin is sallow, swallowing

cloud pallor, almost pale beneath the belly

of the sky. I am cleaving to the coming

rain, the color it casts across my skin,

soaking me flinty ivory, cartilage-hued.

Soon, the skillet gray will crack and sheath

the buildings static, thickly as shadows

or snow. I will keep my body roof-bound,

pray for a strand of lightning to whittle me

electric, warp me wire sharp, singe me still.

Amber Rambharose is finishing her final year as an undergraduate student at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. Originally from Brooklyn, NY, she spends much of her time searching—unsuccessfully—for a sound in the Southern United States that is as soothing as the screech of subway trains. Her poetry can be found in The Virginia Literary Review and Cicada Magazine.

Kathryn Kulpa

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Answered Prayers

I save the weather up to tell him. How the breeze flutters cherry blossoms. It’s always warm in his room so I like rain, when I can bring that, or hints of frost. Maybe he wants to remember what it feels like to come inside from the cold. He blinks once, yes. We’re polite now. It’s what we have.

After the accident, when they thought he would die, the nurse told me to keep talking. Hearing is the last to go, she said, and I sat by his bed and talked for thirty-six hours. I stitched him to the world with my voice. Don’t even think about leaving me, I said. Tough and bitchy, the way he liked me once.

CP

Kathryn Kulpa's fiction has appeared in Monkeybicycle, Metazen, decomP, Hayden's Ferry Review, and other fine places.

Luisa Muradyan

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Records of the Failed Weapons of World War Two

I have trained these dogs to run

after tanks like children

chasing ice cream trucks.

This bitch ran faster than the others,

she knew how fear smelled in the damp

spring. I watched her paws on fire,

I wrote Dear God in the record books.

Or consider the World War

Two scientist playing with his toys

in the bathtub, dreaming

of aircraft carriers made of ice

and sawdust. I dream

of airplanes sawed out of ice blocks,

melting like Iccarus

in the dandelion sun.

I imagine the god of wind tickled

at the sight of the wind cannon

shooting breath at unsuspecting pigeons

and weeping when he saw the invisible

man of air killed as a causality,

surrounded in a pool of oxygen,

oxygen everywhere.

This city is made of paper, fold enough

sheets to build a house, fly a paper airplane

to Osaka. This bat is strong enough to carry

her child in flight, here is a bomb. Here is a city

here is a fire, here is a mother burning her wings

here is a bomb where she once felt the weight

of wrinkled body. Here a baseball hold it in your

palm and watch the origami forest disappear

Luisa Muradyan, originally from the Ukraine, is an English instructor at Kansas State University. Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Anderbo, A-Minor, Neon and other fine places.

Brittany Clark

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 29 May 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Sorry for all these sins and the sins that I cannot remember

We sat in the backseat with linked pinkie fingers begging your mom to drive faster, the Virgin Mary bobble-head nodding with the rise and fall of the gravel road. That was until Confessional when you told the Priest of the time we lay in the dark under your Great Grandmother’s patch quilt, your parents drank white wine in the kitchen and laughed, you turned to me and asked if I had a training bra and suddenly we learned what our bodies could do. After that, you knew we were both going to hell, and you took my religion along with my heart. I still dream about you on certain nights in April. You turn around in your pew during Mass, and slip me a note. “It feels good,” it says, “to say it out loud.”

CP

Brittany Clark is out there somewhere.

Brett Elizabeth Jenkins

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 22 May 2013 05:00:00 +0000

THE HISTORY OF SWEARING

The first time I hear you swear it is a young

summer. You pull me out

of the path of a car. I am on a new bike, now

crushed under the front end of a Honda.

It is not real to me the way you dart out, tear

my shirt for how hard you fling me back

onto the ground and yell to get in the damn house.

I will not think of this day until many years later

on your birthday when incidentally I purchase my first

adult bicycle. How I thought your anger was

at what was lost. How I did not know you loved

what you saved, and will not know it

until years after you are gone.

OLD LIGHT

The whir of the night fan, blowing blonde hair

over dream eyes. Running sticky-footed, wet-eyelashed

across the kitchen floor after a nightmare, calling for mom.

The nuclear power plant controlling the weather, puffing

out white cloud after white cloud.

The Princess Jasmine pillowcase and the beanbag chairs.

Sneaking out when everyone is finally sleeping

to swing alone at the park, looking up and seeing, finally,

the stars for what they were:

a reminder of how long it takes to get anywhere,

and the fact that even after you leave there's still a part of you there,

streaming old light into empty Ohio cornfields.

Brett Elizabeth Jenkins currently lives and writes in Albert Lea, MN with her husband and no children. Look for her poems in Beloit Poetry Journal, Potomac Review, PANK, Neon, and elsewhere.

Brad Rose

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 +0000

The Traveling Salesman Problem

Like a TV shouting at an empty room,
I’m thinking loud thoughts I’m unable to name.
Molecules sort themselves into the shape of a man,
the way fallen leaves once arranged themselves
into the shape of an elm.
So many cities, so many towns,
a lifetime of suitcases, beige food.

I’ve ascended five thousand miles
steeped in a cappella muzak
no eye-contact, vacant smiles.
No matter what you’re selling
redemption is the shortest distance
between two points.
God ticks in every minute.
Elevator time is all there is.

This morning, when I glanced in the mirror,
it was like listening to mute crickets.
I can’t help but think that self-storage is a good idea,
secure and affordable, not that many break-ins.
Can the chameleon recall its native color?

On the highway now,
vacant as a July elementary school,
I turn up the music, drive faster.
Isolated thunder storms, lonely rain,
Why doesn’t the Genie
ever get a wish?

Rented Tux

I wasn’t sure whether I was dead or alive. Now, I know that’s just black and white thinking. I may be empty for the rest of my life, or some fungible equivalent thereof, but when you’ve had everything taken from you, again and again, you try to make the best of absence. Thank God, nature adores a vacuum, that I trained as a mime. Although I haven’t found my voice, I sometimes hear music that isn’t there. I’m taken places. The nights are clean. I sleepwalk. I’m a vacant fathom. Of course, a train doesn’t lay its own tracks, a book isn’t written to be read by other books. There is no Roman numeral zero. When I find myself admiring perfect strangers—the way they seem so comfortable in their skins, so nonchalant—I recall that appearances can be deceiving. And the wind, the invisible wind, always arriving, always departing. Always taking itself someplace brand new.

The Next Thing You Know

Everything, its own invention, happens eventually, although sometimes not at all: the music of fog, cannibal piñata, razor blade hula hoops. Have you noticed that if you talk about time, it slows? If you talk about love, it stops? Today, in Mecca, it’s 109 and raining arithmetic bees. The sky has gone too far. Clocks are machines for the manufacture of moments. Time is its own décor. I wonder what color I should paint the red ant farm? As the smoke clears, my body is riddled with PowerPoint bullets. Fortunately, I’m never hungry, because I’m food. Loving you is like chewing bees to get honey. The newspaper reads itself and begins sobbing uncontrollably. I’m happy that I am a room all to myself. I leave things to chance; nothing is ever my fault. Sometimes it’s particles, sometimes waves. Beneath the striped fur of the tiger, the skin, too, is striped.

CP

Brad Rose was born and raised in southern California, and lives in Boston. Links to his poetry and fiction can be found at http://bradrosepoetry.blogspot.com/

Danny Earl Simmons

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 08 May 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Prompted

I have this friend,
kind of like a sister
and kind of not –

sibling enough for my wife
(I do love my wife)
to let us stay close.

Still, she has that little extra something
that some women have
and other women want –

not to mention those green eyes
that make me look down
when my cheeks turn red.

Let me put it this way,
“sister-kisser”
loses its meaning when applied to her.

Well, I sent her an email,
Hey, I got nothin’.
Send me some prompts.
In less than five minutes,
(she digs giving me inspiration)
I get this back,

If I were not afraid...
I hit snooze and think of you…
I’ve seen you look down…

Acrostic: Mumpsimus

Makes me feel all warm inside, being
unconditional and lacking second thoughts.
Maybe the “I need beer” sign is just a tragic
plea for understanding. Besides, who am I,
standing in judgment of another man’s needs?
I stop the car, hand him a dollar through
my fully opened window, thinking of someone I
used to know. The man nods. I ease on the gas,
See you tomorrow and the next day and the next…

CP

Danny Earl Simmons is an Oregonian and a proud graduate of Corvallis High School. He is a friend of the Linn-Benton Community College Poetry Club and an active member of Albany Civic Theater. His work has appeared in various journals such as Avatar Review, The Smoking Poet, Burningword, and Pirene’s Fountain.

J. Bradley

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 01 May 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Stonewall Jackson Rides Again

When you chiseled your name
into my lower lip, the combination
of your bra clasp fell out of my pocket.

You demoted my hands back
to middle school.

I unfold myself like wide-ruled paper;
there’s a checkbox somewhere.

The Hand Strikes One

Our stomachs rubbed, pale-skinned scouts
counting the merit badges on my carpet
before they hatched.

The reminder sits beneath my belly button,
alien tissue, a good morning anecdote
like the one we first had.

CP

J. Bradley is the Web Editor of Monkeybicycle and the Falconer of Fiction at NAP. He lives at iheartfailure.net.

Gessy Alvarez

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Childless

When I was much younger my husband said I was self-centered. He was often worried I would leave him. If I went out with friends and came home late, he drank whisky until he passed out. He tried to be a good husband, to wash the dishes, do the laundry, and clean the toilet, but for years I did what I wanted, and sometimes I told him what I did, but most times I pretended to be too tired to talk. Now I wonder about those early years. We are childless. I'm too old, too set in my ways. He's too focused on his career. I regret my self-centeredness. I don't understand why he stayed with me. I'm not a nurturer. But he must know this because he has low expectations for me. All he wants is for me to talk to him. Tell him about my day. Ask him, how was work?

CP

Gessy Alvarez grew up in New York City and New Jersey. She received her MFA from Columbia University. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Letras Caseras, PANK, Pure Slush, Thrice Fiction, Bartleby Snopes and many other fine places.

David James

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Revocable Love

It was easy lying there with my head on her left breast listening to the strong business-like beating of her heart. She looked down and said quietly, “I told you my love was revocable. I give it to many men and then I take it back.”

The Undoing

Me, my crowbar eyes trying to pry love from your staring face, and failing. You, your gaze of disinterest covering the room with a gauze, and prevailing. Me, my long ago stories you said you were so tired of hearing, my mistake. You, your countless confessions you told me later not to believe, always crying. Us, our lives frayed before each other did not seem to matter, until now. Us, unmasking our differences day by day with the end seeping into sight.

Night Talk

She said, "Tonight let's talk of things untrue." He said, “ Like black is white and night is day and up is down and in is out?” She said, "Yeah, things like that. Those things we know false for sure. Things like...well, You could say, 'I really love you.' And I could say, 'Yes, I know you do.'"

CP

David James lives in Atlanta, Georgia. These were the first stories he submitted for publication.

Howie Good

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 05:00:00 +0000

CRIMINAL TENDENCIES

Funny, but I used to be a white man in his mid-thirties. Now I know that no revolution can achieve what evolution can’t. Just give me a flashlight & a drawstring bag, & leave a car in the parking lot unlocked, & when I’m done rummaging through the glove box, let me walk away & not be seen. It’s like Helen Keller said (at least I think it was Helen Keller): Water, a silver bracelet with blue stones.

FOREIGN TRAVELS

You’re laughing so hard

at the white bony ass of the moon

that the man on the phone

snaps in irritation, “Lady,

it’s not funny!” though, of course,

like the tree frog tattoo

on my forearm, it kind of is,

an arbitrary moral system

backed up by your private army,

a half-dozen druggies

high on little red cold pills

& unintimidated by the buildings

that Hitler said would someday

make more magnificent ruins

than the marble of the Greeks.

FIVE SIGNS OF EARLY DEMENTIA

I say “electrocution”

though I mean “election.”

My voice shakes

even when

I’m not speaking.

I can watch beer commercials

without becoming the least thirsty.

A crows builds

its dank nest

in the branches

of my heart.

I disregard the warning:

This Bag Is Not a Toy.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of many poetry collections, including Dreaming in Red from Right Hand Pointing and Cryptic Endearments from Knives Forks & Spoons Press.

Ashley McCauliff

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 05:00:00 +0000

12 Items or Less

Standing in line at the local grocer I notice
a woman has plucked her breast
out of her shirt, and comparing herself
to a grapefruit, asks the cashier
if he could imagine one apart
from the body,
a single breast cooling in a steel pan
perfectly intact, cartoonish even--
the nipple cherry red or bubble gum pink,
or perhaps, this breast is a balloon
filled with sand
and after careful examination
bares the indents of various sized
thumbs and forefingers, later identified
by means of Science
as the final blessings and farewells
of all the men who have passed
it along--until it reaches its ending
in the basement of an ordinary hospital, where
the single, perfect breast,
is pickled in vinegar,
or packed into a steel drum
with other assorted organs
not able to be salvaged or refitted;
or tossed into a furnace,
ashes rising out of the hospital’s chimney
with smoke like sweet licorice.

The Last Supper

the Sabbath is not the only day we partake
in such passionate cannibalism--
While Sundays are for consuming Christ
we spend the other six consuming one another.

I lean over the counter and bite your neck
my mouth closed over that particular cord of muscle,
you know the one--you strained while posing
in the mirror, pulling at your skin in unnatural ways so as
to catch a brief glimpse of yourself near death or
forcibly alter the elasticity of your forehead,
cheek girth, those plump saddles
resting just below your eyes--

to ask if your pores bled more of your mother
and chin, your father.
I find no resemblance, and leaning over again
I taste the salt, blood, milk and sweat
at the corner of your thigh and wonder
if your mother has done the same
if she's consumed your father as I have
consumed you, never quite satisfied
until your quivering at the edge
of our mattress, afraid I might swallow you whole.

CP

Ashley McCauliff was taken with Sharon Olds' poetry in college: the darker matter, terrain which otherwise would be ignored, repressed, cut out. She tries to discover these places in her own work and strike them with her language.

Lori White

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Gambling One Ridge Away

We’re stuck on a Wyoming dirt road at nightfall after cutting line around homesteads and hunting cabins all day, two hours from camp, four from a tow truck, the fire one ridge away and the oil stain beneath the engine spreading wide. We’ve got the hood open when our Division Supervisor pulls up in her truck. We agree the grassy meadow is as safe a place as any, and she radios in to let dispatch know she’ll be spending the night out with us. We could’ve ridden to camp in the back of the truck, like we do on the reservation. We are White Earth Engine, Minnesota Ojibwe, Bureau of Indian Affairs, trained in the art of making do, but the Sup is old school Forest Service from California, where they take the every-passenger-has-a-seatbelt rule to heart.

We dig out the MRE’s fire camp packed for us and get down to eating. We keep a wooden bowl stashed on the engine, big enough for five men to huddle around, carved from the first red oak we felled together years ago. We shake the bags and, one by one, spill their hot contents into the bowl, like we’re sitting around the craps table at Shooting Star Casino, eager to see what luck brings: franks and beans, tuna noodle, and three indistinguishable combinations of rice and meat. We eat some then rotate the bowl to the next man while the Sup dines on beef ravioli in her truck, more evidence that BIA always rolls snake eyes.

We pull our red bags from the engine and get ready to bed down when the Sup orders us to keep our fire shelters close; there’s been a wind warning on the radio and she wants us ready. We don’t interrupt the Sup—she seems genuinely concerned—to tell her we smell rain on the way. We’re more worried that, with only three tents and so soon after dinner, we’ll be breaking our own brand of wind. We draw straws for the chance to sleep alone; the Sup stretches out on the seat of her truck, the windows halfway down.

We get an hour’s sleep in before the rain arrives, random pinging on the tents and vehicles. We know what those first drops mean: White Earth will be the first engine demobilized, sent home to Minnesota, our assignment cut short, and with it our overtime and hazard pay. We pull our sleeping bags up against the rivulets seeping through the tents’ worn seams until the Sup yells for us to take cover: The fire is closing in.

We find her inside the cab, wrestling with her shelter, her eyes wild with confusion, disoriented even after we convince her that the roar she hears is rain, not fire, falling from the sky. We coax the Sup to a tent, then settle down in the wet to watch over her. After all, we are White Earth Engine, near experts at shuffling the real and the dream.

Lori White's recent stories can be found online at The Kenyon Review, Spittoon, Necessary Fiction and In Her Place. She teaches English at Los Angeles Pierce College and lives with her partner and their three dogs in a trailer by a lake on the edge of the Los Padres National Forest.

Michael Estabrook

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Dear Ones

Yikes, been awhile since I checked in, the time it does fly! It is now official, Summer is certainly here. Beginning with a heat wave here in Boston. And they say Global Warming might be a factor. Fiddle-de-de as Scarlet would say. I don’t know why we can’t accept things when they are staring us down. I’ve learned over my long, long lifetime that there are a handful of things best not to ignore, such as: Mother Nature, the IRS, my boss, an angry cat (or dog, or gorilla for that matter) a throbbing tooth, a seemingly benign rash, a tornado swirling way off in the distance, ringing fire alarms, an ominous fin sticking up out of the water (and moving towards you) and – most importantly – your Wife (with a capital “W” like Chaucer would write).

During Beethoven’s Third

During Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E Flat Major (the Eroica) I’m swept back in time to earlier days, yanked back abruptly, like a tooth being pulled, into my childhood: I’m bouncing a rubber ball off the cement wall across the street in front of Grammy’s. Uncle Johnny is smiling in his Volkswagen, heading over to pull weeds and hoe his garden. Grandpa Fred stops for a beer at his favorite gin-mill, buys me a soda and a plate of spaghetti. Gramps is cussing the pigeons again, tossing pebbles at the eaves to chase them away.

There are tears in my eyes as Beethoven works his musical magic: even after these many years have passed, I can still see my relatives, Beethoven stopping the stars in the sky, causing the wind in the trees to fall still.

And I’m wondering, as Grammy hands me a dollar bill, asks me to run down to the corner store, fetch the Staten Island Advance, a loaf of bread, a quart of milk, how can he do this to me, how can Beethoven, who’s been dead now for 180 years, continue to do this to me?

Off the coast of Maine

My soul is withering I can feel it withering as I sit in this windowless room reviewing proposed project lists for the 2013 budget: new molds for the industrial-scale downstream systems, restart and integration of the uniscale project, product care expansion to include the pilot-scale portfolio, redesign of the wetting welder software upgrade package.

Twenty people jockeying for funds for their favorite products and projects. The air in the room still and stale lifeless as the energy in an ancient tomb. And I find my mind wandering dragging my heart and soul back 40 years to Dr. Berkowitz’s course on Marine Biology when my career aspiration in life was to become an Oceanographer, spending my time and efforts on a boat in the Mediterranean or off the coast of Maine collecting phytoplankton or horseshoe crab larvae.

Of course I’ve missed that boat, too late now, can never get back there again – in this life at least But, how in the hell did I ever get here? Why am I here, still here? Where have the days of my grandmother gone? Where?

Michael Estabrook is Marketing Communications Manager by day and a struggling poet by night who began getting his poetry published in the late 1980s. Over the years he has published 15 poetry chapbooks, his most recent entitled When the Muse Speaks. His interests include history, art, music, theatre, opera, and his wife, who just happens to be the most beautiful woman he has ever known.

Ray Scanlon

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Gauntlet on the Ground

Last night my grandson guided me on a full-moon nature walk: a labor of love compensates for my diabetes-blasted night vision. Today I started a round of interventional cardiology—love that term—which has already saved my sorry butt more than once. Cheryl and I saw Dad, whose stroke might well have killed him. My Holocaust experience is Wiesel's “Night.” I ate ginger ice cream. Who dares tell me my life is not good?

Eagle Cliff

From the cliff road I watch vultures soar above and below. No vultures? Gaze at the Catskills. Wiry geezer, all swaggering pockets and straps and walking staff, tells Aussies with him they've seen a red-tailed hawk, or maybe an immature bald eagle. Lightning fails to strike him down. Some of my ashes will be dumped here; some will wait in my closet for other venues. As if in death I'll be any better at multitasking.

Ray Scanlon. Massachusetts boy. Has grandchildren. Extraordinarily lucky. No MFA. No novel. No extrovert. His work has been published in Stymie, Prick of the Spindle, and Short, Fast, and Deadly. He's on the web at: http://read.oldmanscanlon.com/

Jane Loechler

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Winning Streak

A night's worth of rain at sunrise. I could drown

in a teacup under a shake of the oleander branch.

I only asked for water, but you bring me vaseline.

I dig deep, find the barter in me. That’s the spirit,

you say. You sleep while I'm left half undrunk.

I grab the keys to your unmarked car.

Fair trade.

Living Room

then comes the part just before I wake up

we are sitting

side by side on the sofa

and you are opening envelopes

we are watching television

a game show in the bonus round

when I realize

I’ve slid my hand flat under your ass

to place a part

of myself

between you

and the earth’s gravity

or maybe just to warm my hand as though

you were my husband

and I could be so familiar

with your body

or even mine

No Cover

It's what I do alone, drive to the North Side, where

the finest ingredients are used, where the sign means

to say GIRLS, but the L is missing, as though once

you get inside you will hear the voices of bears.

Where the tornado hit last year. I never bothered

to come see the uprooted trees, overturned sidewalk,

those bright blue tarps tossed over the roofs. Sleeping

low income children, their mothers dancing for money.

GIR_S. The dream recurs in the gymnasium of my junior high.

Tell myself I am a star. Tell myself the aftermath in past tense.

As it turns out the choice was always one between

my finger and the rest my life. Pointing away from myself

inside the dark room, poking into the red glow across

the surface of a stop bath. Chemistry, repelled and rapt.

Call it a reaction of emergence. This is how we learn

what is not covered in health class, a boy’s erection

through layers of cloth, a living thing against my thigh.

We hover toward each new inkling, fruit in each other’s hands.

I mean it’s not like this was ever my idea, all the boys

on one side, all the girls on the other, lined up, unscathed.

Jane Loechler is a poet and sculptor in St. Paul, Minnesota. By day she is a counter of tax payers' beans. None of these have turned out to be magic yet, so she is holding on to the cow for now. She received her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design and has poems published or forthcoming in Bat City Review, Elimae, PANK 8, Burntdistrict and Sugar House Review. More at: wilcken.tumblr.com

Tyler D. Findlay

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 06:00:00 +0000

NEST

Sometimes I see a distant bird
Staring blankly
Ever shifting
It was on the island that their son went missing
Left to witness
Sweeping madness
They grab at nothing

DIVER

Send my head to the bottom
In want
In obsession
To swell and implode
So I may realize I am alone in a strange place

TICKLE

Let us make one thing clear.
I never hindered her soul.
Rather, I passively encouraged each infidelity,
playing oblivious to her neighborhood romping.
I would pace the house
and sit in each chair,
tapping my feet.
Sometimes I pulled my hair.
To smell their youth in those steaming hotel rooms,
I could only imagine.
She never once saw me sitting in the car outside.
Cigarettes and my wildest dreams.
I watch the lights turn out.
Entranced.

SALAMANDER

The old gas station smothers its lot
Slush puppies and noxious fumes
Vintage porn in a heat wave fit
Standing above the end of a time
Tanks of explosives begging to blow beneath the concrete
I want to climb down in them
To swim in their chemical defeat
Waiting for reaction
Instantaneous Hades should a spark find us
I imagine a shark down there
Gracefully cutting through deep green
Heartbroken
I walk out to the lot
The university is just a few blocks from here
Gyrating in six pack frenzy
Unconscious
Slept

CP

Tyler D. Findlay is a southern gentleman and alleged "problem drinker" from Atlanta, Georgia. He began writing in a rehabilitation facility in the mountains of east Tennessee, and was thereafter exiled to St. Petersburg, Florida. He has since dragged his Georgia bones back home. His work has appeared on the Outsider Writers Collective, Horror Sleaze Trash, and 22 Magazine.

Michelle Holmes

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Complex of lost things

Before I was invisible I saw you; knocking
dusk at the metal of my window screen
Door grown over with empty. You didn't know
my name had no more sound to it so I couldn't
answer you, Apartment Man, oh steel toed lover
of Coltrane at 3 a.m., red truck idling dawn,
your hand raised as though there was music in it
I alone might hear. Did you see me, behind
the curtain, one eye green calling: "Come in
and take some tea," but the other was in shadow
and besides the first one can't be heard unless
you're looking straight into it, so you stood
there, soft bits of almost nothing left by me,
hasty lace trail from laundry room to Apt. No. 2,
dangling from your fingertips like aubergine
satin sloughing from a 9-point buck.
How could I answer? Wearing none, planted, spray
tan still tacky where my thighs met, rank piss
smell of it. If I could turn your face up, see
what kind of man delivers panties to a peeled down
brown girl and keeps his eyes to her eyes
when he hands them over, one by one.
Three pairs were from Kmart, one from Paris, France.
I could have told you this, legs as open as my mouth,
in my bed where you would say you like my laugh even
though I wasn't laughing. For three nights
there's music soft, from somewhere but it's far,
quieting. I press my ear to your wall but
my good eye says you sound like gone.

Hardening off

The day I came unrooted
my Richter scale said 9.9,
The seismic wild of it,
Cracking rocksoil five
generations caked-in.

In an earth-blink
I thought that I could
rise up, spring,
shed my leaves,
and spread across
your far-flung border,
bold as shattercane.

But a geological clock
Ticks slowly; a hundred million
years of indecision pass.

It is summer now.
Time for transplant past.
Dirt hard packed,
toes hard-wired.
Listen to the whir of it.
They say it's spread
into the bones.
Epidural steroid
and hypertonic saline
fills my capillaries now.

If you beckon, I would wash
your amber bottle, cut
my blossom for it.
My skin has never been so soft.

So far, though, you're not
beckoning. I lie still,
wrapped inside this Queen bed.
Everybody wants to hold my hand.
They talk about the weather
so I think about the wind.
If it blows hard enough
I could tumble
like a weed.

CP

Michelle Holmes spent this past year writing in California after a fellowship transplanted her from her lifelong Midwest home where she was the editor of two daily newspapers. Her poems have appeared in Barnwood Press, Word Riot, and other fine places. Quite surprisingly to her, she is the new voice of a children's Bible app.

Jeff Streeby

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Target Ship

It’s 1921 and Kaiser Bill’s coastal raider UB88, her harmless iron breached by Bull Halsey’s well-trained gun crews on the Wickes, slides away bow-first, crash-diving into her infinite future. Six miles off Long Beach, she sits upright on the bottom, her dark compartments filling with sand. All around her, like little stars burning in cold currents of space, hunting lamps of moon-eyed fish light her way.

Every hour, ships put to sea. Every hour, ships arrive somewhere. Day in and day out, green waves break on every shore. Every coastal wind bends its saltgrass. Gannets hover, pitch up, veer sharply away. From our point of view, all these things are indisputable.

You get it, don’t you?

Even before she leaves the slips, UB88 is forever fixed as we are in the present. She cannot be erased. In the depths, cold currents wash the wreck. Coral finds anchorage there and builds, shell on shell, dumbly upward. Scorpion fish and rock cod haunt the deck. Like we will, she herself will resolve in time to rude materials, but though her mass disperse, each forgotten effect her presence has achieved even upon the sediments under her keel will be real.

Nothing is lost.

Every night the same stars mark the mysterious currents of the universe. The same sea roars in the dark heart of any empty conch. Whether it means anything or not, every hour another sail fills with its irresistible wind.

Cool evening—

In the temple pond,
koi rise
to touch a summer moon.

CP

Jeff Streeby grew up in Sioux City, Iowa, where he attended Morningside College. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Gerald Stern’s program at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire. He is a horseman, cowboy poet and performer whose work has appeared in Verdad, Southwest American Literature, Los Angeles Review, and others.

Stephen Griffith Price

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 06:00:00 +0000

One Hundred Happy Letters

Way before my suicide, I’d give the letters to a friend. One hundred happy letters in
my own hand, detailing how I am and how much I truly, truly miss my mum and dad.

And how much I love them, and always will.

We’d discuss the dates at which the letters should be released; maybe one every three
months. And I’d make a special batch just for birthdays, Christmas, days like that...
And I’d pay for the stamps in advance, not to put my friend out or anything.

I pictured their joy at knowing I was still alive, still smiling, still out there somewhere
- never having to worry about my death or at having created a boy who can’t even
look his classmates in the eye or get on the bus for school without a limp-wristed
gesture or a kick in the back.

One hundred happy letters, bound with an elastic band. And no chance of ever making
the ones I love as ashamed of me as I am.

CP

Stephen Griffith Price lives in the Brecon Beacons National Park, Wales, with his slightly overweight pug, Emlyn. His writing has appeared in PinkNews and Giggle Magazine. He graduated from Swansea University’s MA in Creative & Media Writing.

Jonathan Edward Doyle

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 06:00:00 +0000

The Big Bang

I don’t know what to do with my hands. Dad and a significant other, whose long-held smile
must make his face ache by now. I pick at the cuticles, separating strands of loose skin with
verminous energy, stealing looks at faces. He is speaking, asking questions to prompt a
response, trying to make me appear normal, reasonable. I want to, God I want to.

Do not remember this day. This is just the start. Please, do not remember this day.

CP

Jonathan Edward Doyle is a graduate of Zoology. He lives in the UK with friends and his twin brother.

Janet Koops

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Exposure

I wear your love like a cheap coat. Faux leather. Fabric cracking from mild abuse. Cuffs dirty from neglect. Each time you try to reclaim it, you allow my empty promises to swallow you whole and I watch, amused, as you expose yourself to the cold.

Sometimes

They had remained friends for years. Sometimes he'd put his arm around her. Sometimes she'd lean her head back on it when she laughed. Today they sit in silence, close but not touching, lost in their own thoughts, unsure how to proceed.

CP

Janet Koops lives in Toronto. More of her work can be seen at http://postcardfiction.com

Carol Reid

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Jam

Irwin arrives at the February 15th jam with his second-best guitar. Red and white flowers are still in evidence at the bar and the world is split into those who yesterday received retail proof of love and those who were disappointed. If he ever finds a woman genuinely unmoved by this ritual he will take her by the hand and ride the rails cross-Canada to Quebec City and Cape Breton and the Big Rock, as he did in 1970 when such glorious things were based in reality.

His best songs have the rhythm of the rails and paint tiny immaculate pictures. He met God in a dusty station on the prairie and wrote about that but he doesn't play that song too often anymore. It makes the patrons somber and introspective and one or two go home and take a contemplative look at their rifles before heading to their lonely beds. Everyone is lonely these days and everyone is old. There's not a beard in the place without a silver whisker, not a forehead unfurrowed. Every one of the women who come in to hear music is pretty, but worn out. He doesn't sing love songs to them. His is a storyteller's voice, deep and terse, not the voice of malarkey.

Sometimes this Gina comes and sits with him after his set. He doesn't mind and sometimes likes her company. She never talks about herself but he knows her story from Luisa who noticed them sitting together more than one time.

“You just remember, Irwin, that gal has had a shit-kickin',” was the gist of what Luisa said.

Tonight Gina asks him if he has any plans to see the movie on this week at the Ridge. He says he hasn't. Then he wants to tell her about his days in Toronto as bodyguard to the stars. It was a steady job. The stars made regular personal appearances and Irwin spent a lot of time at the movies. He can't relate much to what movies are like anymore. Gina asks him if he ever had to get physical with the fans.

“Not on a single occasion.”

Harvey Lembeck was a nice guy, he says. Remember Harvey Lembeck? The beach flicks? Beach Blanket Bingo?

Irwin can tell by Gina's little smile that she does.

“So your movie-going days are over?” she says.

Indeed they are. But there's a line from a song sneaking up on the both of them and a melody with a heartbeat.

Ozona

There's an old woman in the museum in Ozona, Texas, who will make you a cup of percolated coffee and open a crinkly package of cinnamon biscuits, slide them onto a big clean plate and tell you while you take careful well-mannered bites between answering her questions about the impossibly long drive you've made from where you come from that she also traveled to foreign countries, Egypt and Germany and Wales to name only a few, with a husband who died, and she is now home, the most precious artifact held in the collection, an exhibit of simple kindness visited by weary women of the road, marked now on your map with one lone star.

CP

Carol Reid lives at the north end of Highway 101 and road-trips whenever possible. She is currently working on a collection of stories about the adventures of Gina, who makes a brief appearance in the stories above.

Gessy Alvarez

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 06:00:00 +0000

The Honey Sun

She walked with her right hand over her heart the other in her pocket clutching a tiny coin purse. She looked younger than most 85-year-olds, was well aware of this, cursed god for tricking her into thinking she was still too young to die. She sat on a bench. A voice said: "Are you mad?" She faced the familiar young woman - "No, I'm quite all right." She stared at her past, her forgotten smooth round face, full cherry lips, opal eyes, wavy, spun-silk hair. She inhaled the smell of cut grass, toasted pretzels, and the moisture from the conservatory pool. She heard the laughing children, barking dogs. She felt a breezy kiss on her lips, tasted the honey sun on her tongue.

CP

Gessy Alvarez received her MFA from Columbia University. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Letras Caseras, PANK, Spectrum, Thrice Fiction, The Rose and the Thorn and other fine places.

Mark Reep

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 06:00:00 +0000

How to Profit as Copper Becomes the New Gold

We have no more leaders, only rulers who live in another country. I don't ask why my cousin's hand is bandaged, what he's been burning, what's tarped in his truck. I say I don't watch the news but last night I dreamt I was Jesus Christ, and you know the worst part? My cousin stares at me. He shakes his head. I say you ever think about the pressure? Mess up once, and then what? Start over? My cousin laughs. His teeth are awful. I wouldna lasted long, he says. Got any coffee?

I cut up little squares of baloney, fry him a soft omelet he won't eat. He wants to use my
phone. I say they shut it off. I know he doesn't believe me but he doesn't push it.

At the door he says better not, he needs a shower. I hug him anyway. He's heat and bones
and stink but still tall enough to rest his chin on my head. He says nothing. I nod against his
chest. When he pulls away his sleeve catches the latch. I say wait wait and he stops and
smiles the way he does now, so you can't see his teeth, and lets me free him.

Our needs are a far smoke rising. It's eight o'clock, the scrapyards will be open. I wonder
what they're paying for copper. I'm late for work but I scrape his plate. I don't want to come
home to these dirty dishes.

—First published in the late, great cur.ren.cy

CP

Mark Reep is an artist and writer whose work has appeared in American Art Collector, A-Minor, Blue Fifth Review, Prick of the Spindle, Word Riot’s 10th Anniversary Anthology and many other fine places. He is the former editor of Ramshackle Review, and is represented by West End Gallery, Corning, New York; and Jardine Gallery, Perth, Scotland. Visit his website (http://markreep.net) and blog (http://markreep.blogspot.com).