Monthly Archives: March 2022

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Max Gutmann, ‘Kindling’

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The day his girlfriend’s father let him cut
The kindling was the cracking of a crust,
A heavy volume falling open at
A pleasant page. He felt the guard relax
At last: it takes some trust
To hand a man an ax.

They foraged for straight grain, which wouldn’t knot
The blade, but give hospitably, a quick
Clean breach, if he could hit the angle right.
The older man first watched, and then went in.
Alone, he chopped each stick
To almost pencil-thin,

Absorbed in seeking out that magic split,
Delicious every time that it occurred,
A touch of luck rewarding skill and sweat,
Though earned, still only half-anticipated,
Like just the sought-for word,
Or love reciprocated.

Max Gutmann writes: “I like the pattern—unique without being complex, rhyming throughout but ringingly only at the stanza ends. I hope the last simile feels both surprising and, like an ax biting a block, inevitable.”

Max Gutmann has worked as, among other things, a stage manager, a journalist, a teacher, an editor, a clerk, a factory worker, a community service officer, the business manager of an improv troupe, and a performer in a Daffy Duck costume. Occasionally, he has even earned money writing plays and poems.

‘Kindling’ was first published in The Formalist.

maxgutmann.com

“Chopping kindling” by *Tom* is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Sonnet: ‘Voyage’

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Some watch the widening, receding wake
On life’s long voyage. Others at the bow
Scan ahead, wondering what route we take.
(But Past and Future point to one end, Now.)
When disembarked, what will your story be?
“I looked back, couldn’t tell where we’d begun…”
“I tried to look ahead, but couldn’t see…”
“I read lots.” “Slept.” “I made friends.” “I made none.”
“Sunsets were nice.” “The food was just so-so.”
“I helped someone.” “I tried, but got in fights.”
What’s next?
Aboard Earth round the sun all go,
Each spinning whirl hundreds of days and nights,
Through scores of rounds. How’d we get here? Don’t know.
Then each, some unknown -day and -where, alights.

This poem was originally accepted for Contemporary Sonnet but, as far as I understand, when Charlie Southerland took over from the previous editor all the online passwords had been lost, and the magazine folded. So the poem went to Verse-Virtual instead. Given that its subject matter is the unpredictability of life, such changes for the poem’s own voyage are quite in keeping.

“Ship’s wake” by Dany_Sternfeld is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Tom Vaughan, ‘To Whom It May Concern’

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Remember waking, starting, stupidly young
the promises, the lies, the world’s forked tongue

Remember how you longed for love, and how
you long for love the same way, even now

you know that there’s no cure for loneliness
not even love, let alone happiness

Remember marriage, children, summer holidays
Remember work, remember all the ways

you chose to be defined which were not you –
if there’s a self definable as ‘true’

Then remember prayer, answered or unanswered
(either way, how to tell?). Remember whispered

doubts. Remember the words and images
which led/misled you on your pilgrimage

Remember how you crossed the desert, cursing
Remember how you crossed the desert, hoping

Remember age and illness, letting go
of everything you’d told yourself you know

Remember forgetting the Lord your God decreed
you must remember him, and teach your seed

the stories storing their identity.
And if you read this, please remember me.

Tom Vaughan writes: “I like it because it came in a rush, like something hammering in my head, and because it reflects not just what seems to me the crucial nature of the link between memory (however selective and indeed creative) and identity, a link I saw brutally put to the test during my mother’s long decline with Alzheimer’s, but what has always fascinated me about Judaism and the wonderful emphasis in the Jewish scriptures and festivals on the need to remember, in order to retain/create a sense not just of individual but also of collective identify.

The rush also meant that substantial trimming was called for: it was originally about twice the length. But I hope the final compressed result pins down more precisely the push and tumble of the writing process.”

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and two poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks:
Careers and Other Catastrophes
Familes and Other Fiascoes
Strip Down
Houses and Homes Forever
Travels and Travails.
He currently lives and works in London.
https://tomvaughan.website

‘To Whom It May Concern’ was first published in Snakeskin 277, October 2020

Photo: “Jewish house with Mezuzah” by La Laetti is marked with CC BY-NC 2.0.