POETRY PACIFIC
Sunday, 5 May 2019
PP (8.1): Editorial Notes
dear PP Patrons,
for reasons unknown, much of the essential content about our e.journal, including such as our background information, 'mission statement,' 'disclaimer,' 'guidelines,' 'list of associated journals,' 'links to writer's resources,' 'editors' profiles,' on the right side of our main page, has all disappeared recently. initially, we thought it was an internal technical failure, but so far have failed to retrieve it despite much 'blind' effort on our part. perhaps this unexpected removal results from a new google policy? if so, we become a little worried that google could introduce some changes some day all of a sudden that would not allow us to archive our previously published issues permanently. since the very start, we have been using the blog-based format for our publication, mainly because we hope that by so doing we can make all our published poets/poems available 'permanently' online to any reader anywhere any time even if and after we stop operation. (we understand that if we function within a purchased domain like '.com,' everything would be removed once the website is closed.)
several other things just to remind all our poetry submitters:: to minimise our computer time and gain a bit more freedom from the tyrannical rule of the cyber world, we never give links to anyone whose work is featured in PP, since we release each issue exactly on the date as specified in our acceptance emails. also, as a rule, we do never open attachments, nor do we send email requests for bios upon acceptance - please include it in your submission email in the first place unless you prefer not to provide the information. in addition, our response time will be 4 months instead of 6-8 weeks: if you do not get a response within four months after sending your work to us, that means we have released your submitted work back to you.
- eds. @ PP
for reasons unknown, much of the essential content about our e.journal, including such as our background information, 'mission statement,' 'disclaimer,' 'guidelines,' 'list of associated journals,' 'links to writer's resources,' 'editors' profiles,' on the right side of our main page, has all disappeared recently. initially, we thought it was an internal technical failure, but so far have failed to retrieve it despite much 'blind' effort on our part. perhaps this unexpected removal results from a new google policy? if so, we become a little worried that google could introduce some changes some day all of a sudden that would not allow us to archive our previously published issues permanently. since the very start, we have been using the blog-based format for our publication, mainly because we hope that by so doing we can make all our published poets/poems available 'permanently' online to any reader anywhere any time even if and after we stop operation. (we understand that if we function within a purchased domain like '.com,' everything would be removed once the website is closed.)
several other things just to remind all our poetry submitters:: to minimise our computer time and gain a bit more freedom from the tyrannical rule of the cyber world, we never give links to anyone whose work is featured in PP, since we release each issue exactly on the date as specified in our acceptance emails. also, as a rule, we do never open attachments, nor do we send email requests for bios upon acceptance - please include it in your submission email in the first place unless you prefer not to provide the information. in addition, our response time will be 4 months instead of 6-8 weeks: if you do not get a response within four months after sending your work to us, that means we have released your submitted work back to you.
in this issue, we are honoured to showcase 57 poetry authors and 2 visual artists.
thanks so much for your continued support as well as for your friendly understanding, and
happy spring while enjoy reading/viewing!
thanks so much for your continued support as well as for your friendly understanding, and
happy spring while enjoy reading/viewing!
- eds. @ PP
PP(8.1): Call for Submissions
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES [Revised]
WARRANTY & AGREEMENT
By submitting to PP, the submitter warrants that
s/he alone has created the work s/he is submitting and that
s/he owns all rights to it. The submitter will indemnify and
hold PP and its staff harmless from and against any and all loss,
damage, costs and other expenses arising out of claims,
whatever their nature, resulting directly or indirectly
from breach of this warranty. At the same time,
the submitter/contributor agrees that PP can use
part or all of his/her accepted material, including responses
to PP's interview questions, on its Facebook and/or
other similar social networking vehicles for promotional purposes.
* All poetic and photographic works are carefully read/viewed
year round on a rolling basis for PP's spring or autumn issue,
to be released respectively on 5 May/November;
* Multiple and simultaneous submissions, as well as previously published work,
are all equally welcome insofar as you still hold the copy/publishing rights;
* We wish to pay our poets and buy certain rights from them,
but there is no money exchange involved,
except a genuine shared love for art and wisdom;
* Please send up to 5 of your best shorter poems each time
by pasting them all together with a brief 3rd person bio note
within the body of your email
within the body of your email
to editors.pp@gmail.com,
or visual artworks as individually separate attachments.
Before acceptance, we will NOT open any attachments/files
for virus/spam-related concerns, but we may ask you
to send the accepted work as an attachment;
* Please feel welcome to send us a query if, for instance,
your accepted work does not appear as scheduled;
or other networking vehicles for promotional purposes;
* Our response-time is four months instead of 6-8 weeks from now on:
since we never give anyone any 'rejection notice,' please feel free
to do whatever you want to with your submission
if you do not get any response/acceptance from PP within four months
after you send it over to us. In other words:
only those accepted will get a reply.
Once accepted by PP, please allow at least one year
before submitting new work to us
- Many thanks for your kind support of PP & Gooooodluuuuck!
Once accepted by PP, please allow at least one year
before submitting new work to us
- Many thanks for your kind support of PP & Gooooodluuuuck!
********
book/chapbook manuscript submissions
are closed until further notice
are closed until further notice
4 Artworks by Ginger Cochran
The Artist Statement
Fresh. Romantic. Uplifting.
Those are only three of the many ways my paintings have been described. It’s this that I strive to have my art work embody…. a feeling or story that someone cherishes in their own part of this life. A dear relationship with a loved one, a dream, or even a memory.
But how to do I describe my paintings? A creative journey. A small snap shot into my personal expedition. But through this, I want viewers to create their own stories and journeys. To ponder what each piece brings to them on a personal level.
My fiber works; however, speak a different language. That of sustainability. Smarter living and art practices. Using second-hand or found materials can prove difficult for painting, so I began to experiment with found objects, vintage/second-hand fibers and the art of assemblage for my sculpture. Three words to describe my sculpture?
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
As I employ many sustainable living practices in my home, adopting a sustainable art practice, such as fiber sculpture, was very exciting and full-filling to me.
And though I am a multi-disciplinary artist, I feel each body of work, my paintings and sculpture, both compliment each other very well.
Bionote
Ginger Cochran is a contemporary, mixed media abstract artist living in Dallas, Texas, with her husband and two sons. Ginger is entirely self-taught; focusing in abstract expressionism painting and fiber soft sculpture.
Her inspiration for her paintings is derived from both music and nature. Ginger develops custom color palettes and explores different textures and colors to create whimsical and romantic pieces. She places striking applications of pastel, marker or other medium and pops of color to demonstrate dramatic movement. Each work effectively draws the viewer in to create their own story through design. Inspiration also emerges simply from the medium itself; evolving from one application to the next. Her style depicts the merging of bold colors, textures and strong, forceful applications of medium. Exemplified throughout her work is the recurring theme of movement, color and textures delivered by mixed media, as well as an effective use of negative space, line work and pattern.
Her soft fiber sculpture is inspired by the Earth as well as the fibers themselves. Ginger is always on the hunt for vintage fibers, ropes, found objects and more to include in her sculpture hangings.
Her work effectively compliments many interior design styles, from modern, contemporary to eclectic. Each piece can either act as a focal point/conversation piece or an accent to the design. Eager to please, Ginger works closely with clients on commissions to create one-of-a-kind works to be enjoyed by families for generations to come.
Ginger has displayed her work nationally in Dallas, Houston, New York City, as well as Las Vegas. She has also worked closely with fellow artists on collaborations and as director/curator for various shows and competitions throughout the country.
5 Poems by Liu Weijian
Always
There is always someone
There is always some time
Always much thinking
Always while thinking
Like acute inflammation
Alone, like crossing the river
Along the shore, flower trees, still flowing water
Then, ashore
I know I still need to cross the next time
《总有》
总有一个人
总有一个时段
总是很想
总是在想的时候
视如急性炎症
独处，像渡河
沿岸，花树，静流
然后，上岸
知道，下一次仍需渡
Your Silence, My Poem
I am sure you are thinking too
Because of your silence
You are reading me in a quiet spot
Thus all my poems taste of you
Winter is coming; tea and wine on a winter night, like you and me
Ending the hot and cold is always warmth
《你的沉默我的诗》
我确信你也在想
因为你的沉默
你在静处读我
我的诗便都带上了你的味道
冬天来了，冬夜的茶与酒，像你与我
冷热的最后都是温暖。
Yes, Dear
Be seated here; I will sit there
Why? Because here at the window you can enjoy seeing the snow while having your breakfast
It does not matter: the snow is behind me, and you have me in your snow scenery
《是的，亲爱的》
你坐这边吧，我坐那边
为啥？因为这边对窗，可以边吃早餐边赏雪
没事，雪在我身后，你的雪景里有我
The Secret of Twilight
All, all sadness, all uneasiness is
Like the twilight
All indulgence and obsession
Are the necessary costs
I no longer care about gain, loss or the size of the evil
Simply because of your presence at this moment of reincarnation
Everything is the jargon of flowers in this world
I enjoy our indulgence
Happily accepting the tiny, the low, the decrepit and the marginal
From the chest of spring, with all the red and green in full swing
Let me play another song with xiao at dusk as usual
Quietly, quietly, in wait
《黄昏的秘语》
所有的，所有的忧伤，不安
一如黄昏
所有的沉溺与痴迷
都是必要的成本
我不再计量大小邪正得失
只为这一刻的轮回里有你
万物是天地的花语
我喜欢我们的沉沦
悦纳细小，低沉，颓然，边缘
春的胸怀里，红绿都作纷纷
我吹起了惯常的黄昏箫曲
安静地，安静地，等
Meeting Snow along the Emerald River in Banff
I can't tell.
If I am coming out of a snowy fairy tale
Or walking into a snowing fairy world
The cedars on the banks of two meeting mountains
Which stand in welcoming arrays
Are the subjects of a snowy kingdom
The still condensation of the ice waterfall
Is a timely carving knife
And poetic lines to be edited
If it is as endless ahead
As is my concurrent joy now
I see rocky dhūtas, which count more than eighteen
The car becomes a boat while the snow a sea
Banff's snow
Makes me a child again
This pure white has built another world where I can return in the future
In dream or reality
In spring or winter
In life or death
In thought or poetry
《班芙翡翠河遇雪》
我已分不清
我是在童话雪域里走出来
还是正走进童话雪域
那两山夹岸的雪松
是列队的欢迎
是一个个雪国的子民
那冰瀑的静凝
是光阴的雕刀
是一句句等待修葺的诗句
如果前方没有尽头
正如我在此际的快意也没有边际
我看见石山头陀，那可不止十八个
车变成了舟，雪变成了海
班芙的雪境
让我做回了童孩
这纯白构筑了另一个未来可以回来的世界
或以梦，或以实
或以春，或以冬
或以生，或以死
或以念，或以诗
Bionote
Dr. Liu Weijian, a native of Lianhua County, Jiangxi Province, is a renowned Chinese scholar and poet. A representative of the neo-classical modern poetry in mainland China, he currently serves as Director of the Centre for Chinese Classic Studies of the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, Director and Professor of the Chinese Classic Research Office of the Chinese Traditional Arts and Culture Institute of Beijing University, Dean of China Classical Studies and Publishing Institute, Member of the Chinese Writers Association, and Editor-in-Chief of Conducts, a cultural magazine based in Hong Kong. He has published a series of four books of modern poetry titled Heart of Everything, a collection of classic poetry Rendezvousing with the Shadow of a Flower Rather Than a Human, and a monograph on poetry. His work has won the National Award of People’s Literature’s Mount Tai Cup and a special award for China’s Excellent Publications.
Mr. Ye Yanbin, the editor-in-chief of China's Poetry, published an article in People's Daily, in which he writes:"[Liu’s] new poetry carries a classical taste, and is hard for many to exceed in terms of cultural preparation and subject matter." Executive Vice President of the Chinese Poetry Association, poet Zeng Fanhua thinks Liu’s poetry has “broken the existing pattern of contemporary poetry and, unique as it is, well established his own voice," whereas Cao Wenxuan, a famous critic and professor from Beijing University, believes that "Wei Jian is actually a thinker-poet."
作者小传
刘伟见博士 ，江西莲花县人。中国著名学者、诗人。中国大陆新古典现代诗派代表人物。现任北京社会科学院中国国学研究中心主任，北京大学中国传统艺术文化研究所国学研究室主任、教授，中国国学研习与出版研究院院长，中国作家协会会员，兼香港文化杂志《品学》总编辑。先后出版《但约花影不约人——伟见古体诗选》《万物心——刘伟见现代诗系（全4部）》5部诗集、诗论1部。作品曾经获得全国《人民文学》泰山杯优秀散文奖、中华优秀出版物特别奖。
中国《诗刊》主编叶延滨先生专门在《人民日报》撰文评价其诗歌“新诗具有古典味，文化准备之充分，题材涉猎之广是很多新诗人无法逾越的”，中国诗歌协会常务副会长、诗人曾繁华认为其诗歌“打破诗坛已有格局，独树一帜，发出了自己的声音。”著名评论家、北京大学教授曹文轩认为“伟见其实是思想家诗人”。
In his essay “Viewing the entire history through, and caressing the whole world with one single moment,” Li Yun, a famous poetry critic and Editor-in-Chief of Poetry Monthly, illustrates that Liu’s modern poetry is characterized by 1) a successful exploration of neo-classic modern poetry; 2) philosophical thinking and use of witty poetic language; 3) a tendency towards enlightenment and purity; 4) subtlety and liveness.
There is always someone
There is always some time
Always much thinking
Always while thinking
Like acute inflammation
Alone, like crossing the river
Along the shore, flower trees, still flowing water
Then, ashore
I know I still need to cross the next time
《总有》
总有一个人
总有一个时段
总是很想
总是在想的时候
视如急性炎症
独处，像渡河
沿岸，花树，静流
然后，上岸
知道，下一次仍需渡
Your Silence, My Poem
I am sure you are thinking too
Because of your silence
You are reading me in a quiet spot
Thus all my poems taste of you
Winter is coming; tea and wine on a winter night, like you and me
Ending the hot and cold is always warmth
《你的沉默我的诗》
我确信你也在想
因为你的沉默
你在静处读我
我的诗便都带上了你的味道
冬天来了，冬夜的茶与酒，像你与我
冷热的最后都是温暖。
Yes, Dear
Be seated here; I will sit there
Why? Because here at the window you can enjoy seeing the snow while having your breakfast
It does not matter: the snow is behind me, and you have me in your snow scenery
《是的，亲爱的》
你坐这边吧，我坐那边
为啥？因为这边对窗，可以边吃早餐边赏雪
没事，雪在我身后，你的雪景里有我
The Secret of Twilight
All, all sadness, all uneasiness is
Like the twilight
All indulgence and obsession
Are the necessary costs
I no longer care about gain, loss or the size of the evil
Simply because of your presence at this moment of reincarnation
Everything is the jargon of flowers in this world
I enjoy our indulgence
Happily accepting the tiny, the low, the decrepit and the marginal
From the chest of spring, with all the red and green in full swing
Let me play another song with xiao at dusk as usual
Quietly, quietly, in wait
《黄昏的秘语》
所有的，所有的忧伤，不安
一如黄昏
所有的沉溺与痴迷
都是必要的成本
我不再计量大小邪正得失
只为这一刻的轮回里有你
万物是天地的花语
我喜欢我们的沉沦
悦纳细小，低沉，颓然，边缘
春的胸怀里，红绿都作纷纷
我吹起了惯常的黄昏箫曲
安静地，安静地，等
Meeting Snow along the Emerald River in Banff
I can't tell.
If I am coming out of a snowy fairy tale
Or walking into a snowing fairy world
The cedars on the banks of two meeting mountains
Which stand in welcoming arrays
Are the subjects of a snowy kingdom
The still condensation of the ice waterfall
Is a timely carving knife
And poetic lines to be edited
If it is as endless ahead
As is my concurrent joy now
I see rocky dhūtas, which count more than eighteen
The car becomes a boat while the snow a sea
Banff's snow
Makes me a child again
This pure white has built another world where I can return in the future
In dream or reality
In spring or winter
In life or death
In thought or poetry
《班芙翡翠河遇雪》
我已分不清
我是在童话雪域里走出来
还是正走进童话雪域
那两山夹岸的雪松
是列队的欢迎
是一个个雪国的子民
那冰瀑的静凝
是光阴的雕刀
是一句句等待修葺的诗句
如果前方没有尽头
正如我在此际的快意也没有边际
我看见石山头陀，那可不止十八个
车变成了舟，雪变成了海
班芙的雪境
让我做回了童孩
这纯白构筑了另一个未来可以回来的世界
或以梦，或以实
或以春，或以冬
或以生，或以死
或以念，或以诗
Bionote
Dr. Liu Weijian, a native of Lianhua County, Jiangxi Province, is a renowned Chinese scholar and poet. A representative of the neo-classical modern poetry in mainland China, he currently serves as Director of the Centre for Chinese Classic Studies of the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, Director and Professor of the Chinese Classic Research Office of the Chinese Traditional Arts and Culture Institute of Beijing University, Dean of China Classical Studies and Publishing Institute, Member of the Chinese Writers Association, and Editor-in-Chief of Conducts, a cultural magazine based in Hong Kong. He has published a series of four books of modern poetry titled Heart of Everything, a collection of classic poetry Rendezvousing with the Shadow of a Flower Rather Than a Human, and a monograph on poetry. His work has won the National Award of People’s Literature’s Mount Tai Cup and a special award for China’s Excellent Publications.
Mr. Ye Yanbin, the editor-in-chief of China's Poetry, published an article in People's Daily, in which he writes:"[Liu’s] new poetry carries a classical taste, and is hard for many to exceed in terms of cultural preparation and subject matter." Executive Vice President of the Chinese Poetry Association, poet Zeng Fanhua thinks Liu’s poetry has “broken the existing pattern of contemporary poetry and, unique as it is, well established his own voice," whereas Cao Wenxuan, a famous critic and professor from Beijing University, believes that "Wei Jian is actually a thinker-poet."
作者小传
刘伟见博士 ，江西莲花县人。中国著名学者、诗人。中国大陆新古典现代诗派代表人物。现任北京社会科学院中国国学研究中心主任，北京大学中国传统艺术文化研究所国学研究室主任、教授，中国国学研习与出版研究院院长，中国作家协会会员，兼香港文化杂志《品学》总编辑。先后出版《但约花影不约人——伟见古体诗选》《万物心——刘伟见现代诗系（全4部）》5部诗集、诗论1部。作品曾经获得全国《人民文学》泰山杯优秀散文奖、中华优秀出版物特别奖。
中国《诗刊》主编叶延滨先生专门在《人民日报》撰文评价其诗歌“新诗具有古典味，文化准备之充分，题材涉猎之广是很多新诗人无法逾越的”，中国诗歌协会常务副会长、诗人曾繁华认为其诗歌“打破诗坛已有格局，独树一帜，发出了自己的声音。”著名评论家、北京大学教授曹文轩认为“伟见其实是思想家诗人”。
In his essay “Viewing the entire history through, and caressing the whole world with one single moment,” Li Yun, a famous poetry critic and Editor-in-Chief of Poetry Monthly, illustrates that Liu’s modern poetry is characterized by 1) a successful exploration of neo-classic modern poetry; 2) philosophical thinking and use of witty poetic language; 3) a tendency towards enlightenment and purity; 4) subtlety and liveness.
2 Poems by Eric Paul Shaffer
All There Is
an epithalamion for Jon and Thierry
Winter in paradise this year is dry enough to call a drought.
The grass isn’t green and isn’t growing in the season
we call the rainy one. No clouds color sunrise,
and every night, stars deepen the sky. Ancient light rains
from cloudless darkness. If there were enough for everyone,
the rays wouldn’t travel so fast. Light is a constant
reminder of the yearning between stars and all the worlds
spinning in darkness, like this one, the one we love.
For this brown grass and the open space between stars,
there’s not much rain. Never will there be too much
or even enough, so we celebrate and celebrate fiercely
all there is. When the rain finally comes, I’ll stand
in the storm with my face raised. When the night comes,
I’ll lift my eyes to the light and take it in. Rain will grace us,
and stars will burn. Light flies through the night,
and rain finds the earth for no reason we know, yet we leap
to drink our fill of what falls from above to sustain us.
That House in California
We never resided within those walls, but we lived there
for a few days, and we had a room of our own. On the desk
were photographs in silver frames of children
whose children now had grandchildren. Our meals
were prepared for us, served with wine or tea in low light
and laughter, and ice cream churned on the porch.
Seconds were encouraged. The hours were kind. Scrub jays
fled their shadows on narrow tree-shaded lanes. The crows
were silent at noon, but mockingbirds sang all the local
melodies they’d memorized in a medley at midnight.
Stars were everywhere, all the time. From where we stood
on the dark green, Mars was a dead, red disk, Jupiter revealed
four moons, and Saturn was a hayseed world
of protruding ears. Upstairs were no closets. Instead,
there was a desk, a lamp, a bed, an open window, and a breeze
carrying the comfortable rumble and moan of trains
through the valley. Skeletons danced across the walls, books
tilting beneath their feet, and a rattlesnake of rainbows
coiled by the door. When we knocked, we were welcome.
Bionote
Eric Paul Shaffer is author of seven books of poetry, including Even Further West; A Million-Dollar Bill; Lāhaina Noon; Portable Planet; and Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen. 500 of his poems have been published in reviews in the USA, Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Scotland, and Wales. He teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at Honolulu Community College.
an epithalamion for Jon and Thierry
Winter in paradise this year is dry enough to call a drought.
The grass isn’t green and isn’t growing in the season
we call the rainy one. No clouds color sunrise,
and every night, stars deepen the sky. Ancient light rains
from cloudless darkness. If there were enough for everyone,
the rays wouldn’t travel so fast. Light is a constant
reminder of the yearning between stars and all the worlds
spinning in darkness, like this one, the one we love.
For this brown grass and the open space between stars,
there’s not much rain. Never will there be too much
or even enough, so we celebrate and celebrate fiercely
all there is. When the rain finally comes, I’ll stand
in the storm with my face raised. When the night comes,
I’ll lift my eyes to the light and take it in. Rain will grace us,
and stars will burn. Light flies through the night,
and rain finds the earth for no reason we know, yet we leap
to drink our fill of what falls from above to sustain us.
That House in California
We never resided within those walls, but we lived there
for a few days, and we had a room of our own. On the desk
were photographs in silver frames of children
whose children now had grandchildren. Our meals
were prepared for us, served with wine or tea in low light
and laughter, and ice cream churned on the porch.
Seconds were encouraged. The hours were kind. Scrub jays
fled their shadows on narrow tree-shaded lanes. The crows
were silent at noon, but mockingbirds sang all the local
melodies they’d memorized in a medley at midnight.
Stars were everywhere, all the time. From where we stood
on the dark green, Mars was a dead, red disk, Jupiter revealed
four moons, and Saturn was a hayseed world
of protruding ears. Upstairs were no closets. Instead,
there was a desk, a lamp, a bed, an open window, and a breeze
carrying the comfortable rumble and moan of trains
through the valley. Skeletons danced across the walls, books
tilting beneath their feet, and a rattlesnake of rainbows
coiled by the door. When we knocked, we were welcome.
Bionote
Eric Paul Shaffer is author of seven books of poetry, including Even Further West; A Million-Dollar Bill; Lāhaina Noon; Portable Planet; and Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen. 500 of his poems have been published in reviews in the USA, Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Scotland, and Wales. He teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at Honolulu Community College.
2 Poems by Christena AV Williams
Poetry is My Herb
Call it Kush
I smoke fifty bags in lines
Even Hundred
Poetry is my herb
My ital remedy
Ignite
Burning
Smoke me up
And let the herb fumigate
And let its aroma fill the air
Poetry is my herb.
Soul Penetration
I want to be inside your soul
Flowing up and down in your spirit
Embody in your Heart
I desire to swallow your saliva
Savouring the rainbows from your heavens
While you kiss my kingdom
Quell the fire
Tug me so intensely that I sprinkle
And my eyes blow water bubbles
As I have never experience love making
Before
Dig deep in my blue sea
Washing away past lovers
Caress my figure from hips to lips
To the Pacific’s.
Bionote
Christena AV Williams (born in Jamaica in 1992), Poet, Publisher, Historian and Philosopher. She is an award-winning Author of Pearls among stones. She has recently published Black Gold and Out from Babylon system: Liberation of Mind. She is a finalist in the Hessler street fair poetry contest in Cleveland, Ohio, and she was shortlisted in Desmond O’ Grady Poetry competition, Ireland, Poetry NZ 47, New Zealand, and Shortlisted in jaBlog! Junior authors poetry contest. Also, when she is not writing she volunteers with Manifesto Jamaica and JAYECAN.
Call it Kush
I smoke fifty bags in lines
Even Hundred
Poetry is my herb
My ital remedy
Ignite
Burning
Smoke me up
And let the herb fumigate
And let its aroma fill the air
Poetry is my herb.
Soul Penetration
I want to be inside your soul
Flowing up and down in your spirit
Embody in your Heart
I desire to swallow your saliva
Savouring the rainbows from your heavens
While you kiss my kingdom
Quell the fire
Tug me so intensely that I sprinkle
And my eyes blow water bubbles
As I have never experience love making
Before
Dig deep in my blue sea
Washing away past lovers
Caress my figure from hips to lips
To the Pacific’s.
Bionote
Christena AV Williams (born in Jamaica in 1992), Poet, Publisher, Historian and Philosopher. She is an award-winning Author of Pearls among stones. She has recently published Black Gold and Out from Babylon system: Liberation of Mind. She is a finalist in the Hessler street fair poetry contest in Cleveland, Ohio, and she was shortlisted in Desmond O’ Grady Poetry competition, Ireland, Poetry NZ 47, New Zealand, and Shortlisted in jaBlog! Junior authors poetry contest. Also, when she is not writing she volunteers with Manifesto Jamaica and JAYECAN.
3 Haiku by Julie Emerson
1.
mosses
drinking melted icicle
in the rain gutter
2.
raindrops sliding
down arbutus limbs . . .
I’m awake
3.
seagulls gather
a big audience
of pink clouds
Bionote
Julie Emerson has published books about war, love, plants, birds, and art— her most recent are Twenty Seven Stings (New Star Books) and The Herons of Stanley Park (with photographer Martin Passchier). Her haiku are in anthologies, and she won the Vancouver International Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Competition in 2013. She writes and paints in Vancouver and on Mayne Island.
mosses
drinking melted icicle
in the rain gutter
2.
raindrops sliding
down arbutus limbs . . .
I’m awake
3.
seagulls gather
a big audience
of pink clouds
Bionote
Julie Emerson has published books about war, love, plants, birds, and art— her most recent are Twenty Seven Stings (New Star Books) and The Herons of Stanley Park (with photographer Martin Passchier). Her haiku are in anthologies, and she won the Vancouver International Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Competition in 2013. She writes and paints in Vancouver and on Mayne Island.
4 Poems by Claudia Coutu Radmore
Claudia Coutu Radmore’s daylight hangs on was long-listed for the 2017 CBC Poetry Prize.Accidentals (2011, Apt. 9 Press, Ottawa), won the 2011 bpNichol Chapbook Award; the poem, where language forms, placed second in the 2011 Bliss Carman Poetry Awards. A series of poems, sea oyster leaf, sea olive: Fogo, was short-listed for the prestigious Malahat Long Poem prize, 2017, and will be published in 2018 as a chapbook by The Alfred Gustav Press, Vancouver, in 2018. the business of isness (2017) and fish spine picked clean (2018) by Éditions des petits nuages, Montreal are her latest books. a minute or two/ without remembering and Your Hands Discover Me/Tes mains me découvrent were published in 2010.
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3 Poems by Catfish McDaris
The Biggest Joke is Death
exploring nature, red wagons,
animal love, family, China, the
Arabian desert, quiet birds, burning
books, condoms, Bibles, poet hats,
coffins, cowboys, virgins, ghost
snakes, dog tags, and cannibals.
there is even some sex, but never
enough just a toe dip into the river,
shackled by my years, gravity sucking
my energy, the sky and ceilings piss
on my head, the walls yawn in boredom,
nobody laughs at the ugly mirror.
Sahara
listening to: The Mephistopheles of
Los Angeles by Marilyn Manson
Warming hands and face above a hell
fire in a 55-gallon barrel dreaming of
dancing with a senorita in Guadalajara
Palm trees figs and dates in Damascus
driving Thunderbirds through a sequoia
and zebras and swallowtails in the Sahara.
How the West Was Lost
Frogs on the train track
worms in the graveyard
a dog that won’t let go
Cobra living in the turban
a squirt gun of rye and gin
WARNING: take only one hit
Of melt your mind marijuana
Australian, Pitbull, Russian
Ice, and O G Head Cheese.
Bionote
Catfish McDaris won the Thelonius Monk Award in 2015. His 25 years of published material is in the Special Archives Collection at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is from Albuquerque and Milwaukee.
exploring nature, red wagons,
animal love, family, China, the
Arabian desert, quiet birds, burning
books, condoms, Bibles, poet hats,
coffins, cowboys, virgins, ghost
snakes, dog tags, and cannibals.
there is even some sex, but never
enough just a toe dip into the river,
shackled by my years, gravity sucking
my energy, the sky and ceilings piss
on my head, the walls yawn in boredom,
nobody laughs at the ugly mirror.
Sahara
Of all that is written I only love what is written blood. Nietzsche
Surrounded by dead guardian angelslistening to: The Mephistopheles of
Los Angeles by Marilyn Manson
Warming hands and face above a hell
fire in a 55-gallon barrel dreaming of
dancing with a senorita in Guadalajara
Palm trees figs and dates in Damascus
driving Thunderbirds through a sequoia
and zebras and swallowtails in the Sahara.
How the West Was Lost
Frogs on the train track
worms in the graveyard
a dog that won’t let go
Cobra living in the turban
a squirt gun of rye and gin
WARNING: take only one hit
Of melt your mind marijuana
Australian, Pitbull, Russian
Ice, and O G Head Cheese.
Bionote
Catfish McDaris won the Thelonius Monk Award in 2015. His 25 years of published material is in the Special Archives Collection at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is from Albuquerque and Milwaukee.
2 Poems by Inna Dulchevsky
every day
a good day at its being
and I am like a stork
patiently moving
through my last night visions
word after word cascades
from my pen
into a long confession
obeying the notebook’s lines
and like a snail
that sticks its body
to a wooden piece
and sucks away the color
I nourish myself on sunlight
I drink from sunrays
as if they are straws
into an abandoned sweetness
I watch a hummingbird
that vibrates its wings next to me
combs an air
for a spider’s silk
sounds of a distant piano
Nocturne’s echo
“Life is love. All else is
imagined confusion.”
river like river
Life, after all, is not as good or as bad as we believe it to be. ~ Guy de Maupassant
distortion of the trees
distortion of my body
in the waters I look and
see time passing
current after current
my silhouette
my hair grows longer
it twists my body
bends it at my knees
sediments on the ground
without feet
my memories from memories
my thoughts…
and thoughts of leaves
from trees
are running
running
running
within my mind
just like these tree leaves
floating by
before my eyes
away!
some leaves are spectral
some like ashes
charred
by impermanence
it alters
its best
Bionote
Inna Dulchevsky spent her early school years in Belarus. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. She was awarded First Prize in the 2014 David B. Silver Poetry Competition. Inna’s work has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Storm Cycle: Best Poetry of 2015, The Otter, Peacock Journal, First Literary Review – East, POETRY PACIFIC, Mad Swirl, Suisun Valley Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, The Mind[less] Muse, Aquillrelle Anthology #5 and #7, Pyrokinection, Napalm and Novocain, Jellyfish Whispers, book Lavender, The Cannon’s Mouth, New Poetry, Spark Magazine, Calliope Magazine, KNOT Magazine, 4th annual LUMMOX Poetry Anthology, Antheon, and Manzano Mountain Review. In MeArteka Inna's poems have been published in both English and Albanian. Her interests include psychology, philosophy, meditation and yoga. The light and expansion of consciousness through the connection with inner-self and nature are essential in the writing of her poetry.
a good day at its being
and I am like a stork
patiently moving
through my last night visions
word after word cascades
from my pen
into a long confession
obeying the notebook’s lines
and like a snail
that sticks its body
to a wooden piece
and sucks away the color
I nourish myself on sunlight
I drink from sunrays
as if they are straws
into an abandoned sweetness
I watch a hummingbird
that vibrates its wings next to me
combs an air
for a spider’s silk
sounds of a distant piano
Nocturne’s echo
“Life is love. All else is
imagined confusion.”
river like river
Life, after all, is not as good or as bad as we believe it to be. ~ Guy de Maupassant
distortion of the trees
distortion of my body
in the waters I look and
see time passing
current after current
my silhouette
my hair grows longer
it twists my body
bends it at my knees
sediments on the ground
without feet
my memories from memories
my thoughts…
and thoughts of leaves
from trees
are running
running
running
within my mind
just like these tree leaves
floating by
before my eyes
away!
some leaves are spectral
some like ashes
charred
by impermanence
it alters
its best
Bionote
Inna Dulchevsky spent her early school years in Belarus. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. She was awarded First Prize in the 2014 David B. Silver Poetry Competition. Inna’s work has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Storm Cycle: Best Poetry of 2015, The Otter, Peacock Journal, First Literary Review – East, POETRY PACIFIC, Mad Swirl, Suisun Valley Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, The Mind[less] Muse, Aquillrelle Anthology #5 and #7, Pyrokinection, Napalm and Novocain, Jellyfish Whispers, book Lavender, The Cannon’s Mouth, New Poetry, Spark Magazine, Calliope Magazine, KNOT Magazine, 4th annual LUMMOX Poetry Anthology, Antheon, and Manzano Mountain Review. In MeArteka Inna's poems have been published in both English and Albanian. Her interests include psychology, philosophy, meditation and yoga. The light and expansion of consciousness through the connection with inner-self and nature are essential in the writing of her poetry.
2 Poems by Joseph E. Arechavala
Cardinal
Amidst desiccated brown
the scatterings of snowflakes
and gray ground once soft
with spring
a flutter of winged scarlet,
a sign of glory
brings a smile
He alights, turns to me
and chirps, a semi-
musical complaint
about the lack of birdseed
then twists his head
as though to tell me I
ought to be working
instead of dreaming
the rules of the rules
the rules of the rules broken again
some words you’ve read before:
a/an
the/all
[did you pay attention to these?]
fish/hat
woman/man
howl/laugh
lock/metastasize
[words are/aren't reality]
are these words making a poem yet?
are the
pauses more important than words?
does what I say matter more than the silences?
poetry is tragic
I am a tragedy
Bionote
Joseph E. Arechavala lives in Camden, NJ, born and raised there all his life. He has been writing for over two decades, and has stories and poems published online and in print as well as a self-published novel, Darkness Persists: A Vampire Novel. He is currently working on an anthology of fantasy and horror stories.
Amidst desiccated brown
the scatterings of snowflakes
and gray ground once soft
with spring
a flutter of winged scarlet,
a sign of glory
brings a smile
He alights, turns to me
and chirps, a semi-
musical complaint
about the lack of birdseed
then twists his head
as though to tell me I
ought to be working
instead of dreaming
the rules of the rules
the rules of the rules broken again
some words you’ve read before:
a/an
the/all
[did you pay attention to these?]
fish/hat
woman/man
howl/laugh
lock/metastasize
[words are/aren't reality]
are these words making a poem yet?
are the
pauses more important than words?
does what I say matter more than the silences?
poetry is tragic
I am a tragedy
Bionote
Joseph E. Arechavala lives in Camden, NJ, born and raised there all his life. He has been writing for over two decades, and has stories and poems published online and in print as well as a self-published novel, Darkness Persists: A Vampire Novel. He is currently working on an anthology of fantasy and horror stories.
1 Poem by Archna Sahni
Fasting
Today, my fasting
will not be about food,
but about creating space
for emptiness
Today my heart
is an empty cistern,
opening itself to the sun
finally breaking
through the mist
Today, I will not survive today,
if the sun’s light
does not enter down
into my entrails
healing love’s toxic waste
Bionote
Archna Sahni is a poet and educator who was born in India and made Toronto her home in 1992. Archna’s debut poetry collection First Fire (Calicut: Yeti, 2005) was critically acclaimed, and her second book of poems Another Nirvana is forthcoming in May 2018 by Mawenzi (Toronto). She is the recipient of Agha Shahid Ali Prize for Poetry, and received Honourable Mention for E.J. Pratt Medal and Poetry Prize. She has a PhD in English literature from Panjab University (India) and an MEd in Adult Education from OISE, University of Toronto. She has published widely in literary magazines and anthologies, and taught both in India and Canada.
Today, my fasting
will not be about food,
but about creating space
for emptiness
Today my heart
is an empty cistern,
opening itself to the sun
finally breaking
through the mist
Today, I will not survive today,
if the sun’s light
does not enter down
into my entrails
healing love’s toxic waste
Bionote
Archna Sahni is a poet and educator who was born in India and made Toronto her home in 1992. Archna’s debut poetry collection First Fire (Calicut: Yeti, 2005) was critically acclaimed, and her second book of poems Another Nirvana is forthcoming in May 2018 by Mawenzi (Toronto). She is the recipient of Agha Shahid Ali Prize for Poetry, and received Honourable Mention for E.J. Pratt Medal and Poetry Prize. She has a PhD in English literature from Panjab University (India) and an MEd in Adult Education from OISE, University of Toronto. She has published widely in literary magazines and anthologies, and taught both in India and Canada.
2 Poems by Nancy Anne Miller
Walker
His aluminum cane clicks!
clicks! As he walks the hall,
the sound of a camera shutter
closing on all the light, swallows it.
The rod, a pick like a paper one
used in parks, it punctuates
silence as it hits ground, collects
seconds of a life, keeps it tidy.
Soon one hand will become
two hands as he uses a walker,
like a gate before him which
bar will rise one day, open.
April Fools
The forsythia branches
curve with the clash of
swords as spring fights
winter back like pirates
fought over a bobbing ship’s
domain in a clamourous sea.
Bent in the arc of a twiggy bow,
the bush shoots out sparks of
buds to win back a season.
The singed cusp of Icarus’s wing,
we now all yearn to fly too close
to the sun, even if we perish by fire.
Bionote
Nancy Anne Miller is a Bermudian poet with six poetry books: Somersault (Guernica Editions 2015), Because There Was No Sea (Anaphora Literary Press 2014), Immigrant’s Autumn (Aldrich Press 2014), Water Logged (Aldrich Press 2016) and Star Map (Future Cycle Press. 2016) Island Bound Mail (Kelsay Books 2017.) Boiling Hot is forthcoming (Kelsay Books 2018)
His aluminum cane clicks!
clicks! As he walks the hall,
the sound of a camera shutter
closing on all the light, swallows it.
The rod, a pick like a paper one
used in parks, it punctuates
silence as it hits ground, collects
seconds of a life, keeps it tidy.
Soon one hand will become
two hands as he uses a walker,
like a gate before him which
bar will rise one day, open.
April Fools
The forsythia branches
curve with the clash of
swords as spring fights
winter back like pirates
fought over a bobbing ship’s
domain in a clamourous sea.
Bent in the arc of a twiggy bow,
the bush shoots out sparks of
buds to win back a season.
The singed cusp of Icarus’s wing,
we now all yearn to fly too close
to the sun, even if we perish by fire.
Bionote
Nancy Anne Miller is a Bermudian poet with six poetry books: Somersault (Guernica Editions 2015), Because There Was No Sea (Anaphora Literary Press 2014), Immigrant’s Autumn (Aldrich Press 2014), Water Logged (Aldrich Press 2016) and Star Map (Future Cycle Press. 2016) Island Bound Mail (Kelsay Books 2017.) Boiling Hot is forthcoming (Kelsay Books 2018)
1 Poem by Ray Greenblatt
WHILE THE WORLD IS WHIRLING
The body next to me
in bed is alive,
the bubbling and baking;
around us rafters
creak and crack as wind
shifts the weight on its back;
outside the world is strung with tokens
old snow
slimy sidewalks
empty flower pots on porches;
I know the body beside mine
will rise and become a person,
we will follow our own little daily path
as the world eternally whirls on.
Bionote
Ray Greenblatt is an editor on the Schuylkill Valley Journal and teaches a “Joy of Poetry” course at Temple University. He has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and spoke at the John Steinbeck Festival in Salinas California. His newest book is an experimental novel—half prose, half poetry—Twenty Years on Graysheep Bay (Sunstone Press 2017).
The body next to me
in bed is alive,
the bubbling and baking;
around us rafters
creak and crack as wind
shifts the weight on its back;
outside the world is strung with tokens
old snow
slimy sidewalks
empty flower pots on porches;
I know the body beside mine
will rise and become a person,
we will follow our own little daily path
as the world eternally whirls on.
Bionote
Ray Greenblatt is an editor on the Schuylkill Valley Journal and teaches a “Joy of Poetry” course at Temple University. He has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and spoke at the John Steinbeck Festival in Salinas California. His newest book is an experimental novel—half prose, half poetry—Twenty Years on Graysheep Bay (Sunstone Press 2017).
2 Poems by Rich Murphy
Ancient Script
Spray-painted on the wall,
the same old story
diagnoses and points out
the early trauma and the epilogue.
As soon as imperial impulses
reach across borders,
organs in the body begin to fail.
Minding states and moods
and maintaining internal affairs
(spleen, kidneys, lungs),
the continence for content
stretches or compresses
into cartoon or character.
Even a continent elsewhere
recognizes when aerosol tints
mask calligraphy from stencil.
The whole gang beats up weaklings
who scrounge out a living,
while back home school boards
coast from year to year, truant;
ignored infrastructure potholes.
Guts burst into the streets so,
children run to hide.
Life at the Pharm
The amniotic fluids in time-release tablets,
syringes, and gel caps cradle for the survivor
after mother pushes out the brat.
Vaccines, antibiotics, aspirin, and Xanax
cushion with belly fat for cramped quarters
against a threatening anxiety.
Addicted to sit-coms in Plato’s cave,
the embryo doesn’t sweat
at the steel collar but tee-he-teethes
while canned laughter echoes
throughout “the day.”
Alien cramps and contractions
and a patronizing slap on the ass
places for the space creature.
On a rock orbiting a fireball
while whistling at breakneck speed
to gods know where, the uterine chump
monkeys with placebos,
waits without defense, a will until ill.
Bionote
Rich Murphy’s poetry collections have won two national book awards: Gival Press Poetry Prize 2008 for Voyeur and in 2013 the Press Americana Poetry Prize for Americana. Asylum Seeker is the third in a trilogy out now (2018). The first collection in the trilogy was Americana. Body Politic, the second, was published by Prolific Press in January 2017. Murphy’s first book The Apple in the Monkey Tree was published in 2007 by Codhill Press. Chapbooks include Great Grandfather (Pudding House Press), Family Secret (Finishing Line Press), Hunting and Pecking (Ahadada Books), Phoems for Mobile Vices (BlazeVox) and Paideia (Aldrich Press).
Spray-painted on the wall,
the same old story
diagnoses and points out
the early trauma and the epilogue.
As soon as imperial impulses
reach across borders,
organs in the body begin to fail.
Minding states and moods
and maintaining internal affairs
(spleen, kidneys, lungs),
the continence for content
stretches or compresses
into cartoon or character.
Even a continent elsewhere
recognizes when aerosol tints
mask calligraphy from stencil.
The whole gang beats up weaklings
who scrounge out a living,
while back home school boards
coast from year to year, truant;
ignored infrastructure potholes.
Guts burst into the streets so,
children run to hide.
Life at the Pharm
The amniotic fluids in time-release tablets,
syringes, and gel caps cradle for the survivor
after mother pushes out the brat.
Vaccines, antibiotics, aspirin, and Xanax
cushion with belly fat for cramped quarters
against a threatening anxiety.
Addicted to sit-coms in Plato’s cave,
the embryo doesn’t sweat
at the steel collar but tee-he-teethes
while canned laughter echoes
throughout “the day.”
Alien cramps and contractions
and a patronizing slap on the ass
places for the space creature.
On a rock orbiting a fireball
while whistling at breakneck speed
to gods know where, the uterine chump
monkeys with placebos,
waits without defense, a will until ill.
Bionote
Rich Murphy’s poetry collections have won two national book awards: Gival Press Poetry Prize 2008 for Voyeur and in 2013 the Press Americana Poetry Prize for Americana. Asylum Seeker is the third in a trilogy out now (2018). The first collection in the trilogy was Americana. Body Politic, the second, was published by Prolific Press in January 2017. Murphy’s first book The Apple in the Monkey Tree was published in 2007 by Codhill Press. Chapbooks include Great Grandfather (Pudding House Press), Family Secret (Finishing Line Press), Hunting and Pecking (Ahadada Books), Phoems for Mobile Vices (BlazeVox) and Paideia (Aldrich Press).
5 Poems by Allen Qing Yuan
Banana* Blues: For Langston Hughes
I’m bluer than blue
A branch thicker than the root
A banana unlike any other fruit
But my growth has been severed and burned
Like a scale with weight it cannot measure
The music of my white soul
Is melancholy, oppressed
Singing without words
Confined within black bars
I’m bluer than blue
A composer without compositions
A conductor without a baton
To even guide himself
The song beats away as
I’m singing my blues
*American/British/Canadian born Chinese (ABC/BBC/CBC's) are often referred to as 'bananas' because they are yellow-skinned but 'white-hearted.'
*
Wondering When My Life Began
The instant? an infinitesimal sperm from my father?
Penetrated into my mother’s egg? on a dark ? night
The second? my little head ? was pushed and pulled
Right? Out of my mother’s teenager? womb?
Or the minute? I hit a brick? broke my forehead
And thus got my first scar? (memory?)
With? no awareness of any earlier? childhood
When? or where? did my life? begin on earth?
Immortality
No, I don’t want to live foreverish, nor do I
Care to attain permanence through a few lines
Of English words, but just download my
Self-consciousness into a chip, or
Upload it onto a file, and I can grow into
An integrated part of the universe (until all
Is sucked someday into the singularity)
To explode in another big bang
Basic Punctuation Marks
, before any utterances from God
. behind the human reality in the moment
? after each sentence written in history
! at the end of every show of nature
Two Mnemonic Poems
1/ Coordinative Conjunctions: Fanboys
For all the hills or mountains
And rivers you have seen in your life
Neither of the two kinds is really beautiful on its own
But when a river embraces a mountain
Or the other way around, they become a holy view
Yet you can never see it with your naked eyes
So try to connect with fanboys in a run-on sentence
2/ Lakes in North America: Homes
Huron is your residence, while
Ontario is mine. Once you sail cross
Michigan, you will be able to join the waters of
Erie, where your spirits will evaporate even higher than
Superior, the hub of all streams, rivers and watery dreams
Bionote
Allen Qing Yuan, author of Traffic Light, is a 2-time Pushcart and 2-time Best of the Net nominee. A co-editor of Poetry Pacific, Allen is graduating from the University of British Columbia. Since grade 10, Allen has had poetry appear in more than 70 literary publications across 16 countries, which include Cordite Poetry Review, Literary Review of Canada, Poetry Scotland, Shampoo and Spillway.
I’m bluer than blue
A branch thicker than the root
A banana unlike any other fruit
But my growth has been severed and burned
Like a scale with weight it cannot measure
The music of my white soul
Is melancholy, oppressed
Singing without words
Confined within black bars
I’m bluer than blue
A composer without compositions
A conductor without a baton
To even guide himself
The song beats away as
I’m singing my blues
*American/British/Canadian born Chinese (ABC/BBC/CBC's) are often referred to as 'bananas' because they are yellow-skinned but 'white-hearted.'
*
Wondering When My Life Began
The instant? an infinitesimal sperm from my father?
Penetrated into my mother’s egg? on a dark ? night
The second? my little head ? was pushed and pulled
Right? Out of my mother’s teenager? womb?
Or the minute? I hit a brick? broke my forehead
And thus got my first scar? (memory?)
With? no awareness of any earlier? childhood
When? or where? did my life? begin on earth?
Immortality
No, I don’t want to live foreverish, nor do I
Care to attain permanence through a few lines
Of English words, but just download my
Self-consciousness into a chip, or
Upload it onto a file, and I can grow into
An integrated part of the universe (until all
Is sucked someday into the singularity)
To explode in another big bang
Basic Punctuation Marks
, before any utterances from God
. behind the human reality in the moment
? after each sentence written in history
! at the end of every show of nature
Two Mnemonic Poems
1/ Coordinative Conjunctions: Fanboys
For all the hills or mountains
And rivers you have seen in your life
Neither of the two kinds is really beautiful on its own
But when a river embraces a mountain
Or the other way around, they become a holy view
Yet you can never see it with your naked eyes
So try to connect with fanboys in a run-on sentence
2/ Lakes in North America: Homes
Huron is your residence, while
Ontario is mine. Once you sail cross
Michigan, you will be able to join the waters of
Erie, where your spirits will evaporate even higher than
Superior, the hub of all streams, rivers and watery dreams
Bionote
Allen Qing Yuan, author of Traffic Light, is a 2-time Pushcart and 2-time Best of the Net nominee. A co-editor of Poetry Pacific, Allen is graduating from the University of British Columbia. Since grade 10, Allen has had poetry appear in more than 70 literary publications across 16 countries, which include Cordite Poetry Review, Literary Review of Canada, Poetry Scotland, Shampoo and Spillway.
5 Poems by Jeremy Page
SHADOWLAND
I wake to a new world order.
My radio breaks the news
that suddenly the past
really is another country,
and my passport – my last
in burgundy – has become
a historical curiosity overnight.
To make tea seems
an act of betrayal now –
let it be coffee, croissants,
and let there be cheese,
quark, and a handful of leaves.
I am a citizen of Shadowland
and I have woken somewhere else.
DREAMING MOUNT FUJI
Tokyo. 3.30 a.m.
I have forgotten how to sleep
but I am dreaming Mount Fuji.
She’d pointed from the rooftop –
Over there, she said,
beyond those hills.
And absent half the year
for all we know
in this land, where
(or so we're told)
rabbits can be birds
I will not be here
to see the blossom
on the slopes but now,
whenever sleep defies me,
I shall dream Mount Fuji –
somewhere beyond those hills.
POSTCARD OF ODESSA
Clearing out another drawer,
I come across the postcard
quite by chance – sepia, faded,
the city’s name in Cyrillic script,
and before I know what I am doing
I am composing your name
in characters that are as unfamiliar
to me now as you are,
forty odd years on from the picnic
on the Potemkin steps, the glasses
raised to toast our futures
in the cheapest Soviet vodka;
and all the innocence you coaxed
from me, so tenderly.
KANREKI
It will soon be time for us to dress in red –
earth and dog will coincide as they did
six decades before, when our mothers gave birth
in the same ward the same dark Sunday
that Castro’s men seized one Juan Manuel Fangio.
His captivity would last mere weeks
while we have never escaped each other,
our childhoods lived in neighbouring towns,
adolescences companionably endured, and
all the rest – encounters here and there, reunions
formal and informal, weddings once, then funerals –
and when we’re sixty we’ll celebrate our rebirthing
like the Japanese, clink glasses and toast in saké
those women who shared a ward, gave birth.
CLOSE SEASON
They say it smells of dead holidays.
I say it always did. And out of season
was never the time to connect anything
with anything here, where you can only
wonder at the sea in all the shades
of grey on Richter’s palette, wonder
where the ice-cream vendors go
and if the deckchair man can really
hibernate in his cave beneath the cliff,
with his chairs, his memories of summer.
On the pier a salt breeze ruffles
a scrap of gaudy poster, and offshore,
somewhere close, a ship’s bell tolls
for something gone, for some thing .
Bionote
Jeremy Page has edited the bi-annual literary journal The Frogmore Papers since 1983. He is the author of several collections of poems, most recently Closing Time (Pindrop, 2014) and Stepping Back: Resubmission for the Ordinary Level Examination in Psychogeography (Frogmore Press, 2016). His translations of the Lesbia poems of Catullus were published as The Cost of All Desire by the Ashley Press in 2011. In 2015 he co-edited an anthology of life writing, True Tales from the Old Hill. A novella, London Calling is scheduled for publication by Cultured Llama in September. He lives in Lewes, UK, and is currently Director of the Centre for Language Studies at the University of Sussex.
I wake to a new world order.
My radio breaks the news
that suddenly the past
really is another country,
and my passport – my last
in burgundy – has become
a historical curiosity overnight.
To make tea seems
an act of betrayal now –
let it be coffee, croissants,
and let there be cheese,
quark, and a handful of leaves.
I am a citizen of Shadowland
and I have woken somewhere else.
DREAMING MOUNT FUJI
Tokyo. 3.30 a.m.
I have forgotten how to sleep
but I am dreaming Mount Fuji.
She’d pointed from the rooftop –
Over there, she said,
beyond those hills.
And absent half the year
for all we know
in this land, where
(or so we're told)
rabbits can be birds
I will not be here
to see the blossom
on the slopes but now,
whenever sleep defies me,
I shall dream Mount Fuji –
somewhere beyond those hills.
POSTCARD OF ODESSA
Clearing out another drawer,
I come across the postcard
quite by chance – sepia, faded,
the city’s name in Cyrillic script,
and before I know what I am doing
I am composing your name
in characters that are as unfamiliar
to me now as you are,
forty odd years on from the picnic
on the Potemkin steps, the glasses
raised to toast our futures
in the cheapest Soviet vodka;
and all the innocence you coaxed
from me, so tenderly.
KANREKI
It will soon be time for us to dress in red –
earth and dog will coincide as they did
six decades before, when our mothers gave birth
in the same ward the same dark Sunday
that Castro’s men seized one Juan Manuel Fangio.
His captivity would last mere weeks
while we have never escaped each other,
our childhoods lived in neighbouring towns,
adolescences companionably endured, and
all the rest – encounters here and there, reunions
formal and informal, weddings once, then funerals –
and when we’re sixty we’ll celebrate our rebirthing
like the Japanese, clink glasses and toast in saké
those women who shared a ward, gave birth.
CLOSE SEASON
They say it smells of dead holidays.
I say it always did. And out of season
was never the time to connect anything
with anything here, where you can only
wonder at the sea in all the shades
of grey on Richter’s palette, wonder
where the ice-cream vendors go
and if the deckchair man can really
hibernate in his cave beneath the cliff,
with his chairs, his memories of summer.
On the pier a salt breeze ruffles
a scrap of gaudy poster, and offshore,
somewhere close, a ship’s bell tolls
for something gone, for some thing .
Bionote
Jeremy Page has edited the bi-annual literary journal The Frogmore Papers since 1983. He is the author of several collections of poems, most recently Closing Time (Pindrop, 2014) and Stepping Back: Resubmission for the Ordinary Level Examination in Psychogeography (Frogmore Press, 2016). His translations of the Lesbia poems of Catullus were published as The Cost of All Desire by the Ashley Press in 2011. In 2015 he co-edited an anthology of life writing, True Tales from the Old Hill. A novella, London Calling is scheduled for publication by Cultured Llama in September. He lives in Lewes, UK, and is currently Director of the Centre for Language Studies at the University of Sussex.
2 Poems by Dah
Moths, Flame
At dawn beneath the light
moths come
to the smoldering ruins
searching the ashes
for loved ones
Ash drifts into the air
like stark remains
of dried ghost
hopeless and frail
When the ashes land
they do not break but
vanish in poofs
like powdered birds
stomped on
by the wind’s foot
Circumnavigate
Of the circle, the ring gravitates
toward the center
to adore what it loves
following itself round and round
The eye of the center is a realm
of revolving light, or
the embodiment of entering
a primordial passage
This is how we find our purpose
in life
or the vibrancy of human fusion
by circling as one with the other
Of the circle, it appears full
of the circle, it appears empty
Circles are eternal
either full or empty
Gather your tribe and go
round and round
Feel the whirl, the orbit
the planet, circumnavigate
the center, the outer
the inner, the balance
because a circle never leaves itself
never breaks into a lonesome line
Bionote
Dah’s sixth poetry collection is The Opening (CTU Publishing, 2018) and his poetry has been published by editors from the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Singapore, Spain, Australia, Africa, Poland, Philippines and India. Dah lives in Berkeley, California and is working on the manuscript for his ninth poetry book. He is Pushcart Prize nominee and the lead editor of The Lounge, a poetry critique
group. Dah's seventh book is forthcoming in July 2018 from Transcendent Zero Press, with his eighth book forthcoming in November 2018 from Stillpoint Books.
At dawn beneath the light
moths come
to the smoldering ruins
searching the ashes
for loved ones
Ash drifts into the air
like stark remains
of dried ghost
hopeless and frail
When the ashes land
they do not break but
vanish in poofs
like powdered birds
stomped on
by the wind’s foot
Circumnavigate
Of the circle, the ring gravitates
toward the center
to adore what it loves
following itself round and round
The eye of the center is a realm
of revolving light, or
the embodiment of entering
a primordial passage
This is how we find our purpose
in life
or the vibrancy of human fusion
by circling as one with the other
Of the circle, it appears full
of the circle, it appears empty
Circles are eternal
either full or empty
Gather your tribe and go
round and round
Feel the whirl, the orbit
the planet, circumnavigate
the center, the outer
the inner, the balance
because a circle never leaves itself
never breaks into a lonesome line
Bionote
Dah’s sixth poetry collection is The Opening (CTU Publishing, 2018) and his poetry has been published by editors from the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Singapore, Spain, Australia, Africa, Poland, Philippines and India. Dah lives in Berkeley, California and is working on the manuscript for his ninth poetry book. He is Pushcart Prize nominee and the lead editor of The Lounge, a poetry critique
group. Dah's seventh book is forthcoming in July 2018 from Transcendent Zero Press, with his eighth book forthcoming in November 2018 from Stillpoint Books.
2 Poems by Gaiyle J. Connolly
Ch'an Thoughts
Scholar Ch'an
sits at his uncluttered desk
late in the evening.
He contemplates the Classics
while a cool breeze fans him.
The pale pigment of the moon
outlines mountains and rivers
and washes over his scrolls and pens;
his written thoughts become
delicate watercolours.
He questions the nature of life, so long
that the peonies
in his antique vase
shed their petals
while he sighs.
A butterfly alights
and Master Ch'an
not quite awakened from study-induced sleep
sees its reflection
on the desk of polished wood.
He questions,
Am I Ch'an, the Scholar
dreaming I am a butterfly
or is that butterfly dreaming
it is Scholar Ch'an?
Ch'an extinguishes his lamp;
he's left in semi-darkness.
The butterfly flits away.
The mystery remains,
unsolved.
Serengeti Press, 2015
(author owns all rights)
Dilemma
along the beach I saw you
wearing tattered trousers
you lugged a pail almost half your size
you did it happily
approached politely'
to try to
make a sale
were you sent out by your family
because you were cute
and could earn more money
than they could beg
kids your age back home
play with small pails
in safe sandboxes
of cheery kindergarten rooms
do I help you
or exploit you
if I buy
Bionote
Gaiyle J. Connolly, from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, has numerous publications in local and international periodicals and journals, some of them prize-winning. Her poetry collection, "Lifelines", which she also illustrated, was published by Serengeti Press in 2015. Her readership includes Canada,The United States, Mexico and India. She is currently President of the Tower Poetry Society in Hamilton.
Scholar Ch'an
sits at his uncluttered desk
late in the evening.
He contemplates the Classics
while a cool breeze fans him.
The pale pigment of the moon
outlines mountains and rivers
and washes over his scrolls and pens;
his written thoughts become
delicate watercolours.
He questions the nature of life, so long
that the peonies
in his antique vase
shed their petals
while he sighs.
A butterfly alights
and Master Ch'an
not quite awakened from study-induced sleep
sees its reflection
on the desk of polished wood.
He questions,
Am I Ch'an, the Scholar
dreaming I am a butterfly
or is that butterfly dreaming
it is Scholar Ch'an?
Ch'an extinguishes his lamp;
he's left in semi-darkness.
The butterfly flits away.
The mystery remains,
unsolved.
Serengeti Press, 2015
(author owns all rights)
Dilemma
along the beach I saw you
wearing tattered trousers
you lugged a pail almost half your size
you did it happily
approached politely'
to try to
make a sale
were you sent out by your family
because you were cute
and could earn more money
than they could beg
kids your age back home
play with small pails
in safe sandboxes
of cheery kindergarten rooms
do I help you
or exploit you
if I buy
Bionote
Gaiyle J. Connolly, from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, has numerous publications in local and international periodicals and journals, some of them prize-winning. Her poetry collection, "Lifelines", which she also illustrated, was published by Serengeti Press in 2015. Her readership includes Canada,The United States, Mexico and India. She is currently President of the Tower Poetry Society in Hamilton.
5 Poems by James Diaz
Then She says
i'll be the floor
you be the keeper
remember how young we were
and never will be again
this happy
i dream some nights
that there are no scores to settle here
and the flame under the bed
has no name, but you hear it calling out
heart songs in the dark
coulda shoulda but you didn't
the story is only ever beautiful because it ends
everytime
just
like
this.
I wish i never opened my mouth
to speak
there's clearly so little in there
thought I knew enough to paint
just this tiny square
but the wall had been laughing the whole time
my heart became timid, then fierce
then not big enough
i thought love
was the bite but clearly it was the swallow
a whole ocean of island
and broken boats
i wish i lived with no experience at all
never shook near the drain ditch
or cried from feeling so small
it was just my size
to be so nothing at all.
You Break but You Don't Mend
place my wishes
in your star-jar
come crash a while
under dome light blue
see me twirl into you
with this in-some-other-life-smile
wrapped round the broken fence
called; shadow boxing is your only option
and it's fixed from the start
who you get and who you don't
the falling into place too late
the long drive into walls
off beds hollowed like trees
not even a younger you dared to climb
drunk or sober
you are getting older
you are getting over the light breaking
into you, fix me, you cry in the night
but no one ever will
they don't know how.
I need to write the poem in its worst light
these are sacred things
that I have to tell you
your eyes only, read the pain-poem
it took me years to bottle into a jar
to know what needed to be said
and what did not
yet it was silence all along
the kind that sits at the back of cupboards
that light never reaches
I wanted to touch deeper than I was able
every pain is unnecessary
and I may have broken more promises than bones
but my body-burning was its own beauty
a face that I knew was mine
but couldn't feel, see - this cut called what happened was
you move like a winding path down the spine of a lost, broken boy
who earned what little illumination he has
and it has become like love to him, like light.
Untitled Psalm
I am a pale saint
hanging from a door frame
say, in late fall
all the names here are changing
all the names
but not us
no, we stay right where circumstance put us
stray dogs in the crutch of time
stretched and aching
lowlife lullabies
passed out on the lawn again
like how many prayers
can you fit into one bucket
I know what you lose
has no conceivable form
that you can't put your arms around what's been missing
since you got born
all the light is lifting
but we're dancing
beautifully here
in the dark of the driveway
broken and not caring
how badly.
Bionote
James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (2018) and founding Editor of the Literary Arts & Music mag Anti-Heroin Chic. His work can be found in Occulum, Bone & Ink Press, Moonchild Magazine and Philosophical Idiot. He lives in upstate New York.
i'll be the floor
you be the keeper
remember how young we were
and never will be again
this happy
i dream some nights
that there are no scores to settle here
and the flame under the bed
has no name, but you hear it calling out
heart songs in the dark
coulda shoulda but you didn't
the story is only ever beautiful because it ends
everytime
just
like
this.
I wish i never opened my mouth
to speak
there's clearly so little in there
thought I knew enough to paint
just this tiny square
but the wall had been laughing the whole time
my heart became timid, then fierce
then not big enough
i thought love
was the bite but clearly it was the swallow
a whole ocean of island
and broken boats
i wish i lived with no experience at all
never shook near the drain ditch
or cried from feeling so small
it was just my size
to be so nothing at all.
You Break but You Don't Mend
place my wishes
in your star-jar
come crash a while
under dome light blue
see me twirl into you
with this in-some-other-life-smile
wrapped round the broken fence
called; shadow boxing is your only option
and it's fixed from the start
who you get and who you don't
the falling into place too late
the long drive into walls
off beds hollowed like trees
not even a younger you dared to climb
drunk or sober
you are getting older
you are getting over the light breaking
into you, fix me, you cry in the night
but no one ever will
they don't know how.
I need to write the poem in its worst light
these are sacred things
that I have to tell you
your eyes only, read the pain-poem
it took me years to bottle into a jar
to know what needed to be said
and what did not
yet it was silence all along
the kind that sits at the back of cupboards
that light never reaches
I wanted to touch deeper than I was able
every pain is unnecessary
and I may have broken more promises than bones
but my body-burning was its own beauty
a face that I knew was mine
but couldn't feel, see - this cut called what happened was
you move like a winding path down the spine of a lost, broken boy
who earned what little illumination he has
and it has become like love to him, like light.
Untitled Psalm
I am a pale saint
hanging from a door frame
say, in late fall
all the names here are changing
all the names
but not us
no, we stay right where circumstance put us
stray dogs in the crutch of time
stretched and aching
lowlife lullabies
passed out on the lawn again
like how many prayers
can you fit into one bucket
I know what you lose
has no conceivable form
that you can't put your arms around what's been missing
since you got born
all the light is lifting
but we're dancing
beautifully here
in the dark of the driveway
broken and not caring
how badly.
Bionote
James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (2018) and founding Editor of the Literary Arts & Music mag Anti-Heroin Chic. His work can be found in Occulum, Bone & Ink Press, Moonchild Magazine and Philosophical Idiot. He lives in upstate New York.
3 Poems by Felix Fojas
The Greater Mysteries of Mother Nature
Pampering the human body--
Contrary to what abstemious
Hermits and fanatical puritans
Rebuke as a carnal den of shame--
Must be relentlessly starved
To keep its sanctity. Yet this flimsy
Bag of flesh and bones is a holy
Grail and God’s living temple
On earth where zealous epicures
And hedonists, officiating as
Hierophants and high priestesses,
Celebrate the Greater Mysteries
Of Mother Nature in all her
Boundless lush and leafy glory.
Tongue-Twisting Tropes
Behold this synesthesia of syntactical,
Synergistic syzygy of tangled, tongue-
Twisting tropes by a telltale teetotaler
Ululating an utterance of understatement
Vociferously in vatic verses of verisimilitude
While wrangling with a whimsical, witty
Wizard of words from xenophobic Xanadu
Banging at his xylophone as a yodeling,
Yoyo-ing yogi yawns at a Yiddish yeoman
Yelping yarns and yarns of zigzagging
Zebras of zithering zeugmas in Zululand.
Parting Words
Song, I release you from all
Your filial obligations
And paternal responsibilities.
You are now free to live
Your own life and Godspeed
In your search and pursuit
Of adventure, career, romance,
Friendship and untrammeled
Joy and happiness. Song,
My only advice and parting
Words to you my son is
To find a listening ear that
Will embrace with open
Arms whatever art. insight
And wisdom you can offer.
Song, nestle in that warm
Heart-shaped love nest forever,
Like a homing pigeon, for
By then you have truly found
Your soulmate and twin flame.
Fill the cup and holy grail
Of her heart to the brim with
Rare, connoisseur words of
Endearment and the precious
Vintage wine of sweet nothings.
Bionote
An award-winning and internationally published writer, Felix Fojas is a retired advertising creative director and professor who now works for a multinational bank. He has a BA in comparative literature from the University of the Philippines, an MA in linguistics and literature from De Salle University in the Philippines, and a Ph. D in Metaphysical Science from the University of Metaphysics in Hollywood, California. Fojas's works have appeared, among others, in Paris/Atlantic Journal, Evergreen Review, Taj Mahal Review, The American Dissident, Snake Nation Review, Nomad's Choir, and Anthology Magazine. He was a recipient of a creative writing fellowship in Cambridge University, England, under the sponsorship of the British Council. A resident of Canoga Park, a suburb of Los Angeles, Felix Fojas is co-host of Pinoy Poets' Circle, a literary blog with over 3,500 members worldwide. His book The Supernatural and Beyond printed by the University of Arizona, which has been made into a movie by Up and Away Productions of Hollywood, California, will soon be released worldwide. Email: ffojas@yahoo.com
Pampering the human body--
Contrary to what abstemious
Hermits and fanatical puritans
Rebuke as a carnal den of shame--
Must be relentlessly starved
To keep its sanctity. Yet this flimsy
Bag of flesh and bones is a holy
Grail and God’s living temple
On earth where zealous epicures
And hedonists, officiating as
Hierophants and high priestesses,
Celebrate the Greater Mysteries
Of Mother Nature in all her
Boundless lush and leafy glory.
Tongue-Twisting Tropes
Behold this synesthesia of syntactical,
Synergistic syzygy of tangled, tongue-
Twisting tropes by a telltale teetotaler
Ululating an utterance of understatement
Vociferously in vatic verses of verisimilitude
While wrangling with a whimsical, witty
Wizard of words from xenophobic Xanadu
Banging at his xylophone as a yodeling,
Yoyo-ing yogi yawns at a Yiddish yeoman
Yelping yarns and yarns of zigzagging
Zebras of zithering zeugmas in Zululand.
Parting Words
Song, I release you from all
Your filial obligations
And paternal responsibilities.
You are now free to live
Your own life and Godspeed
In your search and pursuit
Of adventure, career, romance,
Friendship and untrammeled
Joy and happiness. Song,
My only advice and parting
Words to you my son is
To find a listening ear that
Will embrace with open
Arms whatever art. insight
And wisdom you can offer.
Song, nestle in that warm
Heart-shaped love nest forever,
Like a homing pigeon, for
By then you have truly found
Your soulmate and twin flame.
Fill the cup and holy grail
Of her heart to the brim with
Rare, connoisseur words of
Endearment and the precious
Vintage wine of sweet nothings.
Bionote
An award-winning and internationally published writer, Felix Fojas is a retired advertising creative director and professor who now works for a multinational bank. He has a BA in comparative literature from the University of the Philippines, an MA in linguistics and literature from De Salle University in the Philippines, and a Ph. D in Metaphysical Science from the University of Metaphysics in Hollywood, California. Fojas's works have appeared, among others, in Paris/Atlantic Journal, Evergreen Review, Taj Mahal Review, The American Dissident, Snake Nation Review, Nomad's Choir, and Anthology Magazine. He was a recipient of a creative writing fellowship in Cambridge University, England, under the sponsorship of the British Council. A resident of Canoga Park, a suburb of Los Angeles, Felix Fojas is co-host of Pinoy Poets' Circle, a literary blog with over 3,500 members worldwide. His book The Supernatural and Beyond printed by the University of Arizona, which has been made into a movie by Up and Away Productions of Hollywood, California, will soon be released worldwide. Email: ffojas@yahoo.com
2 Poems by Bruce McRae
Chef Recommends The Famine
That's my heart they're serving up
on a plate. And it's medium-rare.
That's my little spunk-rat heart
they're dishing out; delightfully saucy,
basting in its own juices, piping hot.
I'm on the menu; it's a secret family
recipe going back for generations.
"A hint of cloves and a touch of garlic,
that's what the thing tastes of to me,"
that's what the thin girl says to the fat man,
she playing with her food between sighs,
he snapping his fingers at the waiter.
"Garçon! Another bottle of your finest,"
he says, she pushing her dinner aside.
Flyleaf
Everywhere the great poets are dying,
dropping like hints before a birthday,
like the mercury in a Siberian thermometer,
like concrete slabs from a highway overpass;
dropping like trousers at a military medical exam
or names among celebrities.
As if a bar of soap in a prison's showers.
Falling like a meth addict's IQ, or a castle wall.
Like the value of a pre-war mark.
Falling like Fat Boy over Hiroshima.
Like the scented gloves of courtesans.
Everywhere the great poets are falling,
as if a book from a hand to the bedroom floor,
its pages creased, the author sleeping.
Bionote
Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a Pushcart nominee with over a thousand poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press), An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy (Cawing Crow Press) and Like As If (Pskis Porch), all available via Amazon.
That's my heart they're serving up
on a plate. And it's medium-rare.
That's my little spunk-rat heart
they're dishing out; delightfully saucy,
basting in its own juices, piping hot.
I'm on the menu; it's a secret family
recipe going back for generations.
"A hint of cloves and a touch of garlic,
that's what the thing tastes of to me,"
that's what the thin girl says to the fat man,
she playing with her food between sighs,
he snapping his fingers at the waiter.
"Garçon! Another bottle of your finest,"
he says, she pushing her dinner aside.
Flyleaf
Everywhere the great poets are dying,
dropping like hints before a birthday,
like the mercury in a Siberian thermometer,
like concrete slabs from a highway overpass;
dropping like trousers at a military medical exam
or names among celebrities.
As if a bar of soap in a prison's showers.
Falling like a meth addict's IQ, or a castle wall.
Like the value of a pre-war mark.
Falling like Fat Boy over Hiroshima.
Like the scented gloves of courtesans.
Everywhere the great poets are falling,
as if a book from a hand to the bedroom floor,
its pages creased, the author sleeping.
Bionote
Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a Pushcart nominee with over a thousand poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press), An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy (Cawing Crow Press) and Like As If (Pskis Porch), all available via Amazon.
2 Poems by Patrick Connors
In the House Where I Grew Up
The kitchen table
In the house where I grew up
Was wooden, cold and stained
Came apart in the middle
Like so many ruined meals
And other realities hard to digest
Silences which say more than words can say
Furtive glances the only I love you
Support incomplete, bond left unspoken
When we left the house where I grew up
The kitchen table stayed behind
But the dining room table came with us
A place to spend and fear the holidays
An anchor to hold us to our past
When we did not know how to be a family
Epic
My feet
Set squarely in
The present
My eyes
Firmly focused on
The future
The narrow way
Seems dangerous and hard
Wrought with strife
And lonely
But, when not absorbed in
Seeming circumstances
Or caught up in
wavering from
Side
to
side
It merely becomes
The surest, shortest distance
Between two points
The past has passed
The present
Is
But a fleeting gift
I will hold out for
The future
And trust in
What it brings
Love me I'm worthy.
Bionote
Pat Connors first chapbook, Scarborough Songs, was published by Lyricalmyrical Press in 2013, and charted on the Toronto Poetry Map. Part-Time Contemplative, his second chapbook with Lyricalmyrical, was released in 2016. He is a manager for the Toronto chapter of 100,000 Poets for Change.
The kitchen table
In the house where I grew up
Was wooden, cold and stained
Came apart in the middle
Like so many ruined meals
And other realities hard to digest
Silences which say more than words can say
Furtive glances the only I love you
Support incomplete, bond left unspoken
When we left the house where I grew up
The kitchen table stayed behind
But the dining room table came with us
A place to spend and fear the holidays
An anchor to hold us to our past
When we did not know how to be a family
Epic
My feet
Set squarely in
The present
My eyes
Firmly focused on
The future
The narrow way
Seems dangerous and hard
Wrought with strife
And lonely
But, when not absorbed in
Seeming circumstances
Or caught up in
wavering from
Side
to
side
It merely becomes
The surest, shortest distance
Between two points
The past has passed
The present
Is
But a fleeting gift
I will hold out for
The future
And trust in
What it brings
Love me I'm worthy.
Bionote
Pat Connors first chapbook, Scarborough Songs, was published by Lyricalmyrical Press in 2013, and charted on the Toronto Poetry Map. Part-Time Contemplative, his second chapbook with Lyricalmyrical, was released in 2016. He is a manager for the Toronto chapter of 100,000 Poets for Change.
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