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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022

Patricia Seyburn

Acusmata (i)


Pour libations to gods
from the ear of the cup;
don’t craft their images
to wear on your fingers.
Make any sacrifice
barefoot. Put your right shoe
on first, eschew public
roads. Remember, planets
do not love you – they are
vehicles of divine
vengeance: only the moon
and sun can be trusted.
Marvel at silence, try
to be silent for five
years and if all else fails,
recall the tetraktys –
the first four numbers, which
when added together,
equal ten, the perfect
digits – the harmony,
believed Pythagoras
(“chief of the charlatans,”
eye-rolled Heraclitus)
in which the Sirens sing.
​

Acusmata (ii)


Whatever you do, don’t eat
vicia fava – the pale broad bean
may act as receptacle for the soul.
You’d be a consumer of souls
and that’s no way to live.

Some claim the mild legume
an aphrodisiac and you know how
the boss frowns on all things carnal.
You need no degree in philosophy
to see how it resembles the testicles.

As for that rude black freckle
it bears – you can’t tell me that’s not
the prefect of omens. Who needs democracy?
One man, one bean – light or dark –
one vote: that’s no way to run

a nation-state. They are hard to digest,
hinder concentration – please, it’s tough
enough to wade through the oracle’s
elliptical comments. Poor bean, conscripted
as container of sex, spirit and luck,

​minding its business, predestined to mean.


House Brand

                                          
Yesterday, a man named Stephen Alternative
wed a nice girl with the last name, Smith.

She became Barbara Alternative.

What would it be like to be forever the other?

My name remained my own.

I know – don’t tell me – it’s my father’s name. I am still steeped in the patriarchy yeah yeah yeah
and worse,
a named shortened from endless Eastern European glottal syllabics for what shtetl from which we
hailed or what blue-collar profession my ancestors
performed with such integrity
to satisfy the homogeny police.

Tell me again, with a sharp stick: I should have chosen a new name
in some uncorrupted language
but I stuck with the status quo
because Latin holds up well, over time.

I thought everyone would do this.

I meant to fit in.

It backfired.

I have a lot of dinner parties and try to invite people
not like me, not like each other.

No one has a very good time, but no one leaves early,
out of fear they will be the subject of chortling.

At home in bed, they think glad thoughts
about the course of their lives and when they turn off
the lights and the moon turns on, they say aloud,
Hello, Nothingness, Where Have You Been Hiding?


Solanum Tuberosum


Unsightly root crop, durable tuber
unburdened by beauty’s chores I like mine
baked with crisp skin
washed up on Irish shores
from the Spanish Armada’s wrecked galleons –

“the devil’s plant” in France – to eat one,
a sin – member of the deadly nightshade
family – remember them? that bella-
donna felled Marcus Antonius’ troops.

I prefer mine mashed You, pocked, amorphous
shaped, are the most pedestrian, plainest
Jane of staples, ardently endorsed
by Antoine Augustine Parmentier

(humble servant of the 16th Louis)
who believed the mass of French peasants
I like mine small and roasted should love it as
he did, long-imprisoned by ill-tempered

Prussians during Wars enduring Seven
Years: ah, the stamina of pain. But what
are looks and dates, 7,000-year-old
spud, patata, pomme de terre –

translatable and edible until you’re
green and poisonous – most of us embitter
after salad days. Desiree, Amandine
fried I think the world of you

Maris Piper, Kerr’s Pink pancake, gnocchi,
au gratin Mona Lisa, Yellow Finn, Fingerling
Sussbury Gambit, who’d not take a chance
on your survival, you have made your way

into the new world, upended
the supremacy of rice and grain –
what would the Peruvian gang say now?
I like mine shredded, browned and
 
served between a poached egg and buttered toast
on the democracy of a clean plate
.
May we all maintain such dignity
in the face of slander, myriad eyes

on and upon us, bathed in dirt from birth –
no easy berth, yours – sideman, second fiddle –
how few of us valued at what we’re worth –
what exactly are we worth? Pureed with leeks

and butter into a soup Oh Russett
Burbank – the greatest of your bountiful
gifts, itself, is bounty – fill, sate, satisfy,
I fear it’s more than I will be or do.




​
--
Patty Seyburn has published three books of poems: Hilarity (New Issues Press, 2009), Mechanical Cluster (Ohio State University Press, 2002) and Diasporadic (Helicon Nine Editions, 1998). Her poems are currently in Boston Review, DIAGRAM and Hotel Amerika. She is an Associate Professor at California State University, Long Beach and co-editor of POOL: A Journal of Poetry (www.poolpoetry.com). She recently won a 2011 Pushcart Prize for her poem, “The Case for Free Will,” published in Arroyo Literary Review.

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  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
    • Masthead
  • Submit
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Submit Here
  • Features
  • Interviews
  • Book Reviews
  • Previous Issues
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022