Robert McBrearty is Ephemera's May Poet

(4 Poems & More)

Welcome readers!

We’re happy to introduce Robert McBrearty, our selection for May’s Poetry at Ephemera. Thanks to Robert and everyone who submitted in March.

If you’d like to participate, we will be fielding submissions each month to publish one poem per issue from the same poet for the month. Each poet receives a $200 honorarium. For full rules and more info please see our designated post about Poetry at Ephemera. You can also submit via the button:

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Introducing, Robert McBrearty!

Writer Bio

Robert Garner McBrearty’s short stories, poems and flash fictions have been published widely including in The Pushcart Prize, The Missouri Review, New England Review, North American Review, The Lake, Main Street Rag and Woven Tale Press.  He is the author of five books, with a new collection of short stories forthcoming in University of New Mexico Press. He has received a Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award and fellowships from MacDowell and the Fine Arts Work Center. More information about his writing can be found at www.robertgarnermcbrearty.com

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Artist Statement

I once read an interview with the musician James Taylor, and he said that his songs began as something that he was writing for himself, but along the way, if he felt they were good enough, he decided he wanted to share the songs with others. It struck me as similar to my own writing process. I have to feel engaged, energized. The first line needs to make me want to write the next line, and so on. While the work starts in a spontaneous way, a lot of reshaping and refining goes in later if I want to send the work out into the world.  I hope to make the work enchanting, emotionally touching in some way, as if the reader and I are going on a journey together. We’re looking around and trying to figure things out. In recent years, I’ve been writing a lot of flash fiction, and I find the movement back and forth from flash fiction to poetry is invigorating. I don’t have one major theme that calls to me, but it’s more like a collage, a variety of subjects that catch my attention,  something from here, something from there.  The poems here start from direct experience.  I once saw a woman fall to her death right in front of me, as in “Many Ways.” It was shocking, horrifying, and yet what was even more horrifying was that, except for those of us in the immediate area, life went on rather undisturbed at the hotel.  “The Incessant Barking of My Dog” may need no explanation, though I certainly love that dog despite the barking.

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Poems

Each issue of Ephemera spanning May will feature one poem from Robert. After each issue drops, the poem from that issue will then appear here as well. In this case, we’re launching part of Jacquelyn’s first poem below as a preview before the full issue comes out. This post will remain on our Substack, free to view, for the year. We hope you’ll enjoy these poems and revisit Jacquelyn’s page from time to time.

Poem 1 of 4

The Café on the Hill

On this fine morning
the tables of the café
on the hill
are nearly full
and one thrills
to the cheerful chatter.
The air is sweet
even if smoky today
from the fires
of the rabble
burning the town. 
But the path
to our splendid enclave
is well-guarded,
the machine guns 
mounted, ready to fire,
and we are assured
the soldiers will 
will make quick work
of the mob. 
We trust we
are safe here
at the top of the hill.
But what is this?
The waiters in 
their crisp jackets 
are now
brandishing pistols 
as if they are angry
we’ve forgotten
to tip them.
We scream 
and roll 
under the tables
pulling the tablecloths
over our heads.
How rude!
How contemptible!
The morning is ruined
and we have not 
even finished
our scones and lattes. 

Appears in May.1 Issue of Ephemera

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Poem 2 of 4

MANY WAYS

It doesn’t take
a virus
to kill you.
You can die
in many ways.
In a hotel once
a woman fell
screaming from the 
high floors above
into the mezzanine
and shattered
at my feet.
Did she fall
or did she leap
or was she pushed?
The hotel staff
and even the police
seemed incurious 
to know, and
the floor was soon
swept so clean 
I wondered if I had 
only imagined her fall. 

Appears in the May.2 Issue of Ephemera

Poem 3 of 4

Lounging with Bartleby

It cost me
everything
to mope
but I held firm.
Do you want to?
No, I don’t. 
You might detect
in my faint smile
my turn of hip
a certain drooping lip
if I let slip
the fact that
I was saying No. 

While others bustled
With their work
And cool ambitions
Bartleby and I
lounged languidly
on the couch
preferring not. 

Some call it  
giving up, 
but I prefer to 
call it rest,
a winter’s slumber.
Shake my shoulder
in the spring
and I might rise. 

Appears in issue May.3 of Ephemera

Poem 4 of 4

The Incessant Barking of My Dog

Something has killed
my imagination,
perhaps this house
this neighborhood.
I will speak
to the neighbors
and ask
if their imaginations
have been killed too.
Maybe it’s my dog,
the incessant barking.
I have a yard
with a garden.
Maybe I could sit
in the garden
and listen to
the bees
instead of the
barking,
the incessant barking
of my dog. 

Appears in issue May.4 of Ephemera