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Big Toe Review does not publish books/chapbooks. However if you would like to send me a copy of a book/chapbook that
you already have published, I may publish an excerpt along with information on where the book/chapbook can be purchased.
Send books/chapbooks to: Joshua Michael Stewart
181 West Street, APt. D-3
Ware, MA 01082
"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food
and clothes." ---Erasmus
Ladder Music by Ellen Dore Watson
(Alice James Books, 2001)
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Doubting Instinct
I'm doubting instinct, this bullfrog frozen
silent in blasting heat, big mud lump assuming
the safety of camouflage, danger of me---
a hugeness turned toward its rustle and thud.
Without a rhythmic baseline, my ears tune
to background: distant hammering and high up,
a jet tearing bandages from the bright bed linen
of the sky. From across sun-stunned lawns comes
the noise of children, very plural, a class of them
like bubbles frothing over and around each shiny
other, snuffable and sure as fire leaping, together
a brush fire, one rising call like a single moment's
highest licking flame. Yesterday this elementary
noise would have faded from intrusion to wrap-aound,
present or invisible as pounding surf; today their far
voices don't sound different but mean
different, now we know a thirteen-year-old
can inhabit rage so eloquent, rage so unintelligible
as to kill many and fast and not know why. Why
does this frog refuse to move, seem to want me
to meddle? I wish her away from the bank's pounded
brown, back to familiar muck and song. I watch
the geese skate the pond, playing Simon Says
with five fuzzballs they think they can keep safe.
Ha Ha Tonka: a book of rune
by Ryan G. Van Cleave
(Higganum Hills Books, 2003)
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Religion as a Series of Binary Didgits
"To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of his purpose." ---Florence Nightingale
Strange men are gathered outside
the Presbyterian church. They look
like mathematicians, eyes divisible by two,
noses slanted in a perfect hypotenuse
of eyebrow and mouth, hair twined
and untwined from irreverent wind gusts,
a story problem of air, man, and patience
like a mouthful of white dwarf stars.
A ring of breasts circling a sputtering camp-
fire, these strange men move geometrically,
mechanically, as if each motion requires
cosine and tangent in conjunction, their bones
clacking in protest of dropped decimals,
misplaced denominators. The strange men
drink deep from the ocean of July night,
their eyes glittering like calculator readouts
as the moon reaches its apex in the sky,
a single white 0 that challenges the minus
sign of their lips. In the right perspectives, zero
minus zero might just equal one.
In the Summer of Cancer
by John Sokol
(Endymion Press, 2002)
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When Charon Sleeps
It's a slow day in Hades
when the boatman sleeps, like now,
as he leans against his push-pole,
stuck in the black mud
in this toll-shore of the Acheron.
Here, that river of woe
laves his feet while
loyal Cerberus sleeps at his side
with three eyes open,
always sniffing the fetid air
for the smell of death and business,
always dreaming of bonus-bones.
The ferrier never sleeps for long,
but for now, he dozes. Meanwhile,
we are dying, So you be Eurydice
and I'll be Orpheus;
when darkness takes you, I'll
bring you back. I'll play
my shibboleth song, bring coins
for Charon, fresh meat for Cerberus.
When we reach this shore again,
we'll drown the boatman,
we'll sink his boat, we'll kill his dog.
We'll never look back.
Vintage Gray
by Joshua Michael Stewart
(Pudding House Publications, 2007)
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O COME ALL YE FAITHFUL
Midnight Mass:
"Give peace to your neighbors," commanded the priest, so I dodged down under the pew. I always
end up shaking hands with the guy who was picking his nose moments before. No one seemed to notice I was missing, but then
I saw I wasn’t alone. Two pews down an old couple slithered on their bellies heading my way. "We’re trying to
cheat death," said the old man, who smelled of cabbage. "What are you hiding from?" "Snotty fingers," I replied. "Ah yes,
we’ve seen a few of those in our day," said the man’s wife.
To kill time we played a few hands of poker, and by the third round I looked up from my crummy
cards to see half the congregation under the pews, each with their own reason. "I hope those choir ladies haven’t quit
their day jobs," one man muttered. "I caught an altar boy staring at my breasts," whispered a woman in a low cut v-neck. Just
then, a guy tanked up on too much eggnog began belting out Christmas carols. Soon we were all singing, face down on the floor,
patting each other on the back. I didn’t even care what was on their hands, because I felt like we belonged to one big,
happy family.
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