(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