Home

Current Issue

Winter/Spring 2008

Autumn 2007

Summer 2007

Spring 2007

Winter 2007

Autumn 2006

Summer 2006

Spring 2006

Winter 2006

Fall 2005

Summer 2005

Editor's Note

Guidelines

SNR's Writers

Contact


Middle-Aged Karaoke

A big woman jumps

out of a booth
 
deftly, avoiding
tabletop and plastic
vines behind her head.
 
In the chrome diner
she sways at a microphone
 
singing "Daydream Believer,"
The Monkees' best song.
 
She's a slow tsunami,
same as me, though I sway
 
sitting down, enervated
by many drinks. Her friend
 
--a girls' night out--
closes the paper umbrella
 
above the rim of a mug
and waits her turn.
 
I envy their courage.
 
It's early evening.
I'm the only one watching.

Spillway

I can't lift beers--I can't
drink without spilling.
 
When beer runs out my mouth
down my chin
 
to soak absorbent cotton
--I know I'm alive.
 
I do it for freedom, asserting
presence,
 
reaction. Anger too
explains the decisive quality
 
of such joy. Teeth clenched
and abraded by day
 
are raised and open at night
beneath the cans.

Such rebellion is small, a fit
for democracy. 

Ode to the Legend Itself
or Jimmy Pichford
 
The mean guy entered
the sporting goods    with stories around him
 
like a snarl of Dobermans
leashed to his fists. Black discs
 
a little bigger than eyes--his sunglasses
distilled menace   against the pale expanse of his face
 
while I folded shirts
and peeked. Jimmy had the world framed
 
in those glasses--in sinister, circular
perfection. They seemed to motor him, his bulk
 
stretching a sweaty undershirt
to the limit, overhanging
 
dirty white shorts--not as funny
as it should have been.    I forgot to mention
 
the immensity      
of his emergence from a tiny MG
 
with top down. He walked with grace
on his way to the door: poise
 
of the absolute. Above his sandals, summer itself
lay in fear--a shivering glare. 

The Bosses

Those you envy
stare first
 
at animal heads
mounted above the door
 
then drop their eyes
on you,
 
looking for purity. The soft
killer tapping
 
of their fingertips
on palm computers
 
spells your name.

Corrupt Administrators


We know you're the polar regions,
hugely expanded 
 
on a flat map,
 
             or digital squeal,
             a malfunctioning
 
answering machine--
                         what
                         were you
 
before? Does the word choice
inhabit your character?
 
People worry
about their futures
 
under your shadows. You've hoarded
 
a lifetime of slights
and harnessed
 
a subtle intelligence
for potion and power--
 
we call it spin.
 
             We buy it or lose,
             and lose by choice.  

Road Cut

exposed by demolition

Dad, here's a design once pounded by winds,
its life taken by minerals --
a fern you'd find in any wet woods, except the skilled
rock that explains it.   
                        Perhaps now    you're located to know
how sky resembled blue-grey shale    
after the asteroid hit Yucatan.
~
One Sunday he
pretended -- too much hesitance,    too much effort
on display. He knew it was
the last time
before I knew it, the smile on his face
both acted and felt,    the anxiety
a templet --
          the hospital room won't leave my mind
          (window, light, five people,
          the terrible matte texture
          of space itself),                     
a dwelling for many years -- not every day,
just off and on    like long-wave peaks from a resting brain   
hooked to an EEG.
                     I've tried often to put myself in his place,
to understand his trial, his mind
with body stuck on a bed,
                               trying to think
                               beyond the limits
of empathy,    in order to carry him forward.







Copyright 2008, Timothy Houghton. © This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.



Timothy Houghton's latest book of poems is Drop Light (2005, Orchises), and he worked on poems for that book at The MacDowell Colony and Hawthornden Castle International Retreat. Relatively recent reviews of DL appeared in The Literary Review and Chelsea. Poems have recently been published in such magazines as Chelsea and Stand Magazine. He lives in Baltimore where he teaches at Loyola University. He also leads local birding hikes for Audubon.