3 Poems by Marcia Arrieta

renaissance spring

fields of waves
railroad tracks
coast & clouds
a turbulent sea
wind & abandoned steel
mountains fall through fingers
lost cities
orange trees & sand


awaiting an answer

concrete examples solitude the treadmill the farmland reading logs chicken coops
embroidered dish towels

the word enigma complicates the conversation although no one is talking
resonance book store on green street art gallery at the top of the stairs

snow falling cherry blossoms & anemones
a branch in the middle of the stream sits on a rock thinking



i erase the board

“Alas, there are so many things between heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed.”
“I saw ascetics of the spirit approach; they grew out of the poets.”
                                                                        Nietzsche—Thus Spoke Zarathustra


chalk dust.     galleons.

remote possibility.     primeval waters.      risk.


Bionote

Marcia Arrieta is a poet and artist. Her work appears in Web Conjunctions, Ellipsis, Cold Mountain Review, Osiris, BluePrint Review, Alice Blue, Ditch, Eratio, Moria, The Last VISPO Anthology, and Category 2 Installment One, Red Ochre Press .  She is the author of one book of poetry, triskelion, tiger moth, tangram, thyme (Otoliths Press), and two chapbooks, experimental: (Potes & Poets Press) and the curve against the linear (Toadlily Press’s The Quartet Series—An Uncommon Accord). She edits and publishes Indefinite Space, a poetry journal.

2 Poems by LB Sedlacek

Porcupine Rain

When the rain comes
pouring, pounding into
the mud, flowing through gutters

as cars on highways racing
to work.  We can only
guess its schedule --

how long it will stay, or
how heavy or light the water will
be, or how much good it will do.


Candy Sweet Veins

Stars and polka dots become weapons of choice
with flailing arms and legs, next stop motor control.
But it doesn't stop -- more power to the legs.   And
we can beam information across a room but we can't
cure anything bad, real bad, very good.  The little white
sticks taste like candy.  Puts all kinds of ideas in
the mind.  We puff on them like cigarettes.  Everyone
tries them sooner or later.  We are slaves to the alarm
clocks spread throughout the house going off every
six hours.  This kind of work begs for something
stronger.  A lack of sleep may produce a drug
induced state, kind of like being drunk.  Maximum
interruption in a 10 lb. frame.


Bionote

LB Sedlacek's poetry has been published in a variety of publications such as Big Pulp, Mastodon Dentist, Fickle Muses, Apparent Magnitude, Sea Stories, Ginosko, Connotations Press, Tertulia Magazine, The Broad River Review, The Hurricane Review, and others. LB's latest chapbook is District of Confusion (the Washington, DC poems).

2 Poems by Alisa Golden

Not Falling / Not Moving  
(Dedicated to the spirit of Aikido)

Not Falling

When fear leaves,
a vague     word     is left:
the four shadows where
the letters were
removed.

They were there, once,
in the darkness. She can feel
the     memory.

She moves to a
new spot higher up
and knows
what it feels like to
   *
fall.

She learns and lands
on her feet
after rolling like a ball
and she is not afraid—

She is not    falling,
she is
in    f l i g h t—

That is the beauty
of rolling light.


Not Moving

He walks  a pattern with a stick,
each step in a line to strike
resolved to remove a
threat with a breath;
he can diffuse
the anger of a stranger.

As his body moves,
growing between the
cracks in the ground
his    m i n d   is
not moving.

Clear and careful
quick to respond
antennae tuned
aware as a sensing
cat’s whiskers
striking only air
he becomes
the magician, whistling.

One foot o p e n s  the ground
while the other pivots around—
interchange of left and right:
a dance of flight.

Arms high
as the jo flies, controlled,
circling before it lands

So fast
So clear
Unseen
the attacker: gone

the air, trembling.
the earth, still.


Bionote

Alisa Golden writes, makes art and handmade books, and teaches bookmaking in the Printmaking Program at California College of the Arts. She is the editor of Star 82 Review, and her work has been published in several magazines including Transfer, Generations, 100 Word Story, The Monthly, and Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine (UK). Info: www.neverbook.com.

1 Poem by Roy K. Austin

BREVITY OF LIFE

That old beech held me high
when I was a young boy,
but with these brittle bones
I cannot climb her now,
and still she stands, breaking
through my lifetime’s weather,
sturdier than ever ,
her gnarled, transforming boughs
once mine, twisted skyward
with all my childish dreams;

old hands touch her bole now,
feel that numb resistance,
impervious to me,
my wise, old age to her
a mayfly existence.


Bionote

I am retired and reside in Dorset England, Have written poetry for 20 years mainly metaphysical. I followed 20th century sages notably Alan Watts. kushuk@talktalk.net

1 Poem by Christopher Mulrooney

it's a rap party

the Jungleland cruise safari
up the wickets down the bowls
everywhere the boaters flying freely
could you the argument please sustain
across the bar doubly syncopated
around the bend into the home stretch
with a stare from hungry children after the war
commercially successful pictures with big eyes


Bionote

Christopher Mulrooney has written poems in Mot Dit, Paragon, Rhythm, Pacific Review, Tulane Review, Orbis, and Weyfarers. christophermulrooney@yahoo.com

2 Poems by Bethany W. Pope

Hecabe

Let me lie. There's no comfort in your comforting.
I was a princess born. My husband was a king.
I saw him hacked to death at his own altar.

The sons I bore were heroes to a man,
not cast in the common mold.
I laid my cut hair on their graves, their markers my tresses.

Now comes the last, the crowning agony:
that I, in my old age, shall go to Hallas as a slave
to help my mistress in her weaving, to sweep the floor

and carry keys that admit no freedom,
and if that scar-legged fox should wish it in his madness,
house my dust for a time in Odysseus's bed.

This messenger softens truth as my daughter distorts it.
Polyxena has no living husband- she keeps house for a grave.
She has gone beyond comforts.

Mad Cassandra, the last of my lovely ones,
dances to Hymen with hands full of lit torches,
she tears the wreath of laurels from her head.

She will not last long with Agamemnon.
The last of my children. My sunk, royal paps
will never feed others.

I am old, shorn, thoroughly humiliated-
draped in jokes and old rags. And yet.
Even here, in a basement, lodged with the dead

and the seepage from corpses, I am myself. A queen still.
Bear it. If Helen should come to me, glowing as always,
unlikely suing for mercy, I would grant it.

She never chose what she was, no more than I did.
This is a world where every princess is voiceless,
or mad like my daughter, no matter what she has said.

Like the wife of the master I go to, my life was spent weaving,
trapped in spindle, frame, bobbin,
caught in the threads.


Sisters II

Thirteen year old thighs, starved twigs, clamped
against the steaming flanks of the skeletal doe-eyed Guernsey,
pressing rib-bars against the slight muscle swell of hungry calves.
The hidden, ruptured though unblossomed cleft
tickled at the bloody prow by the hair ridge that sprouts along the spinal
column so that this girl seems some prepubescent acolyte of Mithras,
though she is evading slaughter. She does not beckon to the knife,
though the sickle moon intimates the fact that the blade-edge is coming.
It is cold, here, in October. She presses her arms around the place
the breasts will come, thinking saving my sister is saving myself.
Death cannot be worse than raping. The fields are reaped,
soil ruptured, right down to the corn stalks.
Blue lights flash on the distant horizon,
sunrise is coming, arresting fugitives in flight.


Bionote

My first collection, A Radiance is available for purchase here: http://www.culturedllama.co.uk/books/a-radiance. View my blog: http://sinetimorepress.wordpress.com/. Watch a recording of a poem from A Radiance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doiZZ2D3nXs&feature=share http://www.amazon.com/
The-Life-of-Dogs-ebook/dp/B00638M0SI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-ext&ie=UTF8&qid=1320445865&sr=1-1. bluejubatus52@gmail.com

3 Poems by Robert Wexelblatt

                             Poème du Jour

                            When the iron certainty of fanatics
                         
                             is fractured by the soft skepticism
                           
                            of the civilized, when everyone’s rights
                           
                            are firmly the rights of all, when the dawn
                           
                            does not disclose a single corpse on the sand
                           
                            and earthbound hope again extends feathered
                           
                            wings, then our children may learn to recite
                           
                            sonnets older and better than this one.
                           

                            What must we sacrifice to the gods of
                           
                            weather?  Our trucks, our toasters, the Sabbath
                           
                            lights?  In August’s heat, desperate souls dial
                           
                            down self-defeating air-conditioners.
                           
                            A tsunami heaves above the supine
                           
                            city, our delusions of innocence.
                           

                       
                           False Spring

                           
                           The day stretches out like a waking cat.
                           
                            Firestoned mud softens; emerald daffodils
                           
                            stand headless but eager.  Sudden grackles
                           
                            squawk and bully among flocks of fretful
                           
                            winter sparrows cleaving to their feeder.
                           
                            Ridged with grit, snow banks shrivel to gray knolls.
                           
                            Joggers emerge, cyclists in their Christmas
                           
                            gear; warm air inveigles with soil’s scent.
                           

                            But to the north winter marshals its last
                           
                            battalions, a blizzard of misery
                           
                            to tease and freeze heart’s expectations.
                           
                            Like gobbets of torn flesh, huge wet flakes fall
                           
                            through the streetlamps’ pale glow.  In the morning
                           
                            a cold sun winks off treacherous streets.
                           

                           
                            Birthday
                           

                            Age is the illusion mirrors make real,
                           
                            a fact your adolescent soul belies.
                           
                            Reflections don’t reveal what you feel,
                           
                            just someone worn and wizened and not wise.
                           

Bionote

Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies.  He has published essays, stories, and poems in a wide variety of journals, two story collections, Life in the Temperate Zone and The Decline of Our Neighborhood, a book of essays, Professors at Play; his novel, Zublinka Among Women, won the Indie Book Awards First Prize for Fiction in 2008.  His most recent book is a short novel, Losses. wexelblatt@verizon.net
   

                           

   

1 Poem by E.J. Priestley

Rage

Fight beyond the moment,
beyond the day that grown
from hours breaks.
The parts of us we were,
am now & will always be
from other lives unfold in a glimpse,
yet all at once...
nine thousand angels
live on the head of this pen
the sunsets eye saw
are cluttered
with the bones of these ashes
time is the fire
in which we burn


Bionote

E.J. Priestley

Travels: Africa, Europe, China
2008—2011 China.  Taught University
2011—2012: Lecturer in Honors Program (Early Entrance Program CSULA) where students graduate University at age 15.
2012—2011  Statement Magazine: CSULA
2009—2010 Renaissance Noire Vol.9FALL, WINTER 2010pg.68-69 New York
FOR KEEPS, a novel—2009 Otis-Parsons
Essay: "The Spirit of Art" for the Art—2003Marquette University
RAW DOG, a novel—
1995-2013--Writer's Guild of America Member
Abracadabra—1994 Heat Press, Edited by Cris Peditto
1992/94- /Lannon Foundation Fellow:
Arts Recovery Project Fellow:
We Speak as Liberators—1970 Dodd, Mead Publishers NY
What We Must See—Young Black Storytellers 1971
BEYOND BAROQUE, MAGAZINE--Story: “Nature of the Scar
LA WEEKLY Newspaper
May 6-12, 2004 Issue-- Story: “Along the Watts Tower”
January 19-22, 2004 Issue-- Story: “Incident at Charcoal Alley”
December 2003 Issue-- Story: “The Ice Storm”
October 10-16, 2003 Issue-- Story: “Ten Cents A Life”
Anthology: In The Eagle's Beak (1998) —Ardora Publishing Company, Madrid Spain, with Introduction by Mireia Sentis

3 Poems by Eleni Zisimatos

Apart

Missing, you are missing

I don’t know real from unreal
anymore
or maybe
I do.

That is the problem
knowing too much

infernal fires
undo the clasps
of a black gown

dropped.

I fall only to rise
I must be careful not to
over-extend

the choir of angels sings
slow


Silk

Is it black or is it dark-brown
I can almost feel the silk
but it is not body that I see
now, only a whisper
and a cry, a song and

we are asleep in a grand hallway
where light and dark collide

tear out the empty
replace it with the full

I want to be near, to feel it
living or beyond
there are answers that we
don’t know

the silk wraps around me
I can breathe it in,

the dark bliss


STATUE

inside the blood clots
the white is a figment, an illusion

            statue–

at the centre of everything
snow sheltering

she can see the precise hand raised
the other, on extended knee

it is worship, this monument, this
frozen alabaster trick

still, she stops and listens to the ex-
cavated statue’s outer shell

the face immovable, the hand
that chiselled is long-gone

what is a memory?

in the midst of this invincibility
she unleashes flesh, blood at the centre
red heart across statue, snow

certain, there is something
in the ice

that moves  


Bionote

Eleni Zisimatos is a widely published Canadian poet living in Montreal. She has been a finalist in the National Magazine Awards for her poetry and the Irving Layton Awards for both her poetry and fiction. She is currently co-editor-in-chief of the poetry magazine, Vallum: Contemporary Poetry. www.vallummag.com

3 Poems by Mary Jo Balistreri

Jam Session

                    Yellow finches perch
                                on swaying Niger-seed feeders

while hummers change sound

into light. It’s early but wind

plays rhythm, whisks cluster-

chord chimes, snares limbs

of bellowing bass, swishes

soft across pond’s skin.

Tempo scoops and lifts

spun wings of birds

impatient red accent

buzz of vibration

melodic quotation.

They will jam

until the sun grows high

until Honeysuckle Rose whorls

her sweet trumpet in the gathering heat.

  

Degas’ Woman

A woman bends for shells in the early light,

the ample tenderness of her curved back

a soft charcoal outline Degas might have

rubbed, making summer out of pastel and canvas.

Across her bare feet, a song of morning swooshes

pale green against the rounded, still form.

Small children inch into the surf,

their flowered hats blooming like water lilies.

The woman’s spine, bent like a fishing rod,

bows to the sea’s abundance, a connection

of give—and—take generosity.

Finding her treasure, she rises, slowly, the shell

cradled in her cupped hands. She smiles,

pleased with the beauty she holds as the children

draw near to see. Up above, gulls wing in the sheeted sky,

their looped script, black and silver.

The sun shifts, the shell gatherer rises, and memory nests,

curved line inside the woman, inside the observer, inside the poem,

where in the ongoing present

nothing is ever lost.

 haiku

torn from tree for love

honey-sharpened by fierce sun

tongues of bright mangoes

Bionote:

Mary Jo writes poetry in a spirit of discovery, of witness, and of trying to understand who she is and her place in the world. She has been published in Avocet, Passager, The Healing Muse, Verse Wisconsin and others. Bellowing Ark Press published two books of poems, Joy in the Morning, 2008, and Gathering the Harvest, 2012. Please visit her website for more information: maryjobalistreripoet.com

3 Poems by Diane Payne

Hong Kong Flu

Fever came on fast. Without warning. Kept rising,
rising, rising, til my head felt like it exploded.
My parents noticed something wasn’t right
after I passed out on the dining room floor.

Doctor visited me at home, and said I had the Hong Kong flu.
My mother convinced him she could take better care
of me than the nurses in the hospital. He knew the real reason,
shook his head sadly, and left her with medicine.

I wrote letters to boys in Vietnam and knew Hong Kong
was somewhere in that direction. Fell asleep dreaming
of envelopes filled with colorful germs, but no words.

Weeks passed lying on a cot in the living room.
Down the street, a girl died of this same flu,
and I curled up on the stiff cot wondering if I’d notice
the difference between sleeping forever and sleeping through my feverish dreams
of watching people wearing big straw hats pushing carts down narrow streets.
I longed for an encylopedia so I could find some connection
between my fever and this faraway place.

If I lived, I was certain my parents would buy an entire
encylopedia set. A salesman might even give them a deal
if he came while I was burning in fever. Suddenly
my head was swimming in visions of Hong Kong and
I worried they’d buy H if we could only afford one volume.

I missed our dogs who lived in the yard
and whispered, “Buy D,” before falling asleep
dreaming of dogs wearing straw hats, dogs chasing carts,
dogs running through rice fields.


Before the Phone Goes Dead

I answer the phone and listen to a woman ramble on about
how she has locked her keys in the car and nothing is going right.
"I know this is the wrong number and I'm in this dark parking lot."
Then the phone goes dead and I'm left wondering if I should trace the call,
notify the police, or simply finish reading my daughter her books before bed.

Phone rings in the middle of the night and I must decide whether to answer it
or wait until morning to see who has died.I pick up the receiver but say nothing.
"Pendejo! ¿Sabes quien es?" he laughs.
I have no idea who he is and remain quiet.
"La cagamos," he continues.
"Portate bien," I say before the phone goes dead,
hoping he'll believe he's called his mother by mistake.

On a hot afternoon the phone rings and a man begins talking about how there's
only four hundred more miles to drive and everything will be fine this time.
He's sorry about what has happened and is certain it won't happen again.
"Baby, I can't wait to see you. Baby, why aren't you saying anything?"
"I think you have the wrong number."
"Quit clowning, Baby."
"I'm not."
Then the phone goes dead.


ARRANGEMENTS

As a child, I'd rearrange the living room furniture
before my mother returned from another stay
at the hospital, looking somewhat faded and less
complete after having tumors removed here and there.

Feeling incapable of providing a miracle,
I'd haul the worn-out orange chair to a different
corner in the living room and the beat-up couch to another wall.

Knowing my mother would be spending her entire day
sleeping on this couch, I'd try to find a view that'd
replace oldness with new. Make the place look like
a living room instead of the dying room it always became.

Mother would stagger in looking confused. Too young to understand the peaceful
disorientation of morphine,I'd watched my mother find the couch and mumble it looked
so nice and clean before falling asleep, rearranging her dreams.


Bionote

Diane Payne is the author of the recently published short story collection Freedom's Just Another Word <http://www.amazon.com/Freedoms-Just-Another-Diane-Payne/dp/0615786766>, the memoir Burning Tulips <http://www.amazon.com/Burning-Tulips-DIANE-PAYNE/dp/1888996897/ref=la_B003KIMVB0
_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1364566560&sr=1-3>, and the young adult novel A New Kind of Music.
<http://www.amazon.com/New-Kind-Music-ebook/dp/B003QTDMH0/ref=sr_1_3_title_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364566592&sr=1-3>. She teaches creative writing at University of Arkansas-Monticello, where she's faculty advisor of Foliate Oak Literary Magazine.<http://www.amazon.com/New-Kind-Music-ebook/dp/B003QTDMH0/ref=sr_1_3_title_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364566592
&sr=1-3>

3 Photos by Zhijian Tao

Spring Snapshots...

PP Topic (5): What Makes a 'Great' Poet?

Editorial Note

Since the outset of this year, PP has posed a topic for its chatroom on a monthly basis. Newly switched into a quarterly publication, we now have to make some changes accordingly: for each issue/quarter rather than for each month, we will continue to pose a topic for discussion. At the same time, we invite all those readers/visitors interested to participate by offering feedback or simply dropping by. Also, we welcome you to raise topics for PP's chatroom, and will eagerly post/publish whatever might be interesting to our readers/visitors. Our observations may be too biased from time to time, but they are meant to be 'broken bricks thrown out to attract beautiful jade,' as a famous Chinese saying goes.

The Observation

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that when it comes to poetry reading, everything is highly subjective, personal and individualized. Indeed, since every reading is a new poem (even if it is exactly the 'same' piece), it seems, more often than not, 'poetic luck' rather than 'poetic quality' that contributes most significantly to the making of a great poet in today's world. While all 'MFA'-related personnel as a powerful interest group may have been playing a dominant role, let us just consider this process:

1) An 'emerging' (or never-previously-published) author begins by making a whole series of poetry submissions to all kinds of literary outlets. After certain period of time, the author has work eventually accepted by one or even more well-recognized magazines. With such credit(s), the author becomes more acceptable to other publications.
2) Then, at certain juncture, the same author, or even another never-published one, pays certain sum(s) of money to take part in one or more poetry contests. About half a year later, the author wins a prestigious prize and, with this record, the author's popularity grows among name-hunting editors/publishers.
3) Famous as the author has become, all kinds of honor start to pile up on him/her, sometimes for political reasons, other times for economic concerns and, most of the time, for the Matthew Effect, until the author is recognized as a poetry lord or 'great' poet of the day.

This may sound incredible, but it is highly probable. If the author is lucky enough, his/her poetic talent, if any at all, is discovered by a few editors/judges/publishers, or readers in power, who somehow love something about the author's poetic work that may or may not necessarily have anything to do with the intrinsic quality of great poetry in the first place. Otherwise, it is quite difficult, if not entirely impossible, to account for this paradoxical situation: many 'great' or famous award-winning poets have written few lines that are really interesting to the common reader, while those collections put out one after another by some highly honoured poets contain few stanzas that show fine quality. In more cases than one might think, the 'greater' the poet, the less 'good' the work really seems to be; or, the bigger the name (of a poet or literary magazine), the 'smaller' the content.

In the past, a poet was traditionally recognized as great because of the poet's great artwork, as in the cases of Homer, Li Bai, Su Dongpo, Milton and Keats; however, in today's world where there are numerous literary contests and endless economic concerns, a poetry author could grow 'great' simply as a result of good luck; put another way, a poet has gained a great reputation mainly because certain 'wordlords' with certain idiosyncracies happen to hand-pick his/her work at the right moments for the right events. This certainly should not be the case. If not, then:


The Question

What contributes most significantly to the making of a 'great' poet in today's world?

Your written comments on or response to the topic are more than welcome in the box below or at editors.pp@gmail.com.

PP CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES::

WARRANTY: 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.

* All poetic and photographic works are carefully considered year round on a rolling basis for PP's spring, summer, autumn or winter issue;

* No author information except names and email addresses in your submissions please - we will ask you for a brief professional 3rd-person bionote upon acceptance;

* Multiple and simultaneous submissions, as well as previously published work, are all equally welcome insofar as you hold the copy/publishing rights;

* There is no money exchange involved, except a genuine shared love for art and words;

* Please send up to 5 poems, preferably by pasting them all within the body of your email, to editors.pp@gmail.com, or visual artworks as an attachment, and feel free to send us a query if, for instance, your accepted work does not appear as scheduled - our response time is shorter than 4 weeks after receipt;

* Please note only those accepted will get a reply - Many thanks & Gooooodluuuuck!

POETRY PACIFIC (2.1): Back Page

POETRY PACIFIC

[SPRING ISSUE 2013]

Natural Networking: Photo by Liu Yu

Thanks for reading, and please stay tuned...

3 Poems by Susan Terris; 3 Poems by Rebecca McKeown; Alert for Subs

3 Poems by Susan Terris::

Memo to Self

did you clap for Tinkerbelle or wish her dead

and Little Mother who betrayed Tiger Lily

you never were one to put up with competition

were you

Memo to Self

try not to see yourself as Hester that letter

the scarlet A is only the mark

of a desperate soul willing to risk

all for an alphabet of joy

Memo to Self

neither Beatrice nor Laura you are

no one’s muse no poet extolls your virtues

invokes immortality but still you may a-

muse and intimate immoralilty

Bionote:

Susan Terris' book GHOST OF YESTERDAY, New & Selected Poems was published in 2013 by Marsh Hawk Press. Ms. Terris is the author of six full-length books of poetry, fourteen chapbooks, and three artists’ books. Journal publications include: The Southern Review, FIELD, and Ploughshares. She had a poem from FIELD in PUSHCART PRIZE XXXI. She’s editor of Spillway Magazine and a poetry editor for Pedestal Magazine and In Posse Review.

-----------------------------------

3 Poems by Rebecca McKeown::

Overdose

Trapped in a never ending loop of pill cocktails.

Anti-thises and anti-thats — prophylactic lullaby-makers

In this clinical inferno.

My head’s a hatchback open wide.

No Sunglasses

Let me down.

My spirit is spiraling—

Her wings tattered—

She’s done with soaring

Anymore.

She likes to stare down dreams

In back alleys,

Like a stray cat, her

Wiry, wasted purrs

Rattle past ears

Too sick to listen

Anymore.

Let me bounce

Again.

I want to just

Open my self

And be careless.

I don’t want

To

Think

Or muse

About what

I would want

If I could have everything.

I just want to exist

And soar a little, again.

Just high enough

To brush the clouds

With my ruddy

Knees and to giggle

Through my lungs

And squint into

The sun

Because you don’t need sunglasses when you’re free.

Flow

Sitting on the park bench,

Watching old mothers

And young mothers

And pigeon ladies

And ice cream sellers

And men with pointy, greased moustaches

hustling by--each thinking in echoing chants,

“Step, step, breathe, step, breathe, step, step.”

I am reminded of your leaving

And how I’d shuffled backwards,

My feet collecting carpet fuzz,

As I’d tried to backtrack through time.

Bionote

Rebecca McKeown grew up in a small western New York college town, which has inspired many of her poems and short stories. A journalist, PR coordinator, craft blogger, and handmade jewelry maker, McKeown prefers fine poetry over fine wine, and rum over most other things, except maybe whiskey. She is also the Editor-in-Chief and founder of The Rampallian literary magazine. She rambles a lot over at www.RebeccaMcKeownWrites.com.

-----------------------------------

Dear Submitters/Friends,

For your information, here is our new email address for submissions:: editors.pp@gmail.com, which becomes effective on 3 May 2013. please feel welcome to send all your poems and/or artworks to this address. The old email address (yuans@shaw.ca) will be closed permanently very soon.

Also, we have just set up our facebook account for Poetry Pacific; the address is https://www.facebook.com/poetry.pacific. You are more than welcome to network with us there!

Please note that PP is to switch into a quarterly publication in just a couple of days. In fact, Poetry Pacific (2.1 Spring Issue) is ready to be released on 5 May 2013; and PP (2.2 Summer Issue) has already been fully committed, but submissions are open and welcome for subsequent issues. 

Many thanks for attention, and stay tuned...

PP Editors

3 Poems by Denny E. Marshall

Wind Dance Green

Trees dance
With each other
Some dance close
Some far away
Others sing
While others sway
Then settle softly
Till the wind
Kisses them again


Capture

I want to hold you
Like the light
You are
To capture
And put in a jar
To carry around
With me
To shine
Those times
We are apart


The Sign

I am at the point
I do not know what to do
Would it be the best thing
To let her go
I do not know the answers
God, please give me a sign
I do not know what she wants
You know what she is thinking
All the silent covers
All the many fronts
I cannot see through walls
Or the burden that she carries
I would rather hold her
Than walk away
I could be invisible
If that is the way, she feels
If she needs someone to love
I will not let her go
Will it be a mystery
Does she love me
A question I do not think
She may never answer
The hardest part
Is not the pain
The hardest part
Is why?
Oh, God
Please give me a sign
Should I really
Walk away
With something pulling at me
Unexplained
Oh, please give me a sign


Bionote

While Denny E. Marshall has done art & poetry for many years, the last couple of years have brought a lot of first. In 2010, he wrote his first haiku, in 2011 first fiction, and 2012 first article. The article titled “Rejection Is A Good Thing, Stop Whining.” appears online at the Eclectic Eel website on the All about Art page. Denny does not have a Facebook page or Twitter account but does have a website with previously published works.

3 Poems by Martin Willitts, Jr.

Internment

Some will deny this happened.
This always happens when they realize it could have been them —
either the ones that made it happen; or, the ones it happened to.
Complicity is the same as victimization.

There are some will say this event was a lie.
No one can fake the aftermath of carnage,
so they exaggerate truth with some lies
until anything is possible or impossible.
Conspiracy is a word to the unwise.

Some will say the death squads are imaginary.
Tell that to the nameless buried in mass graves.
Tell that to the ones identified.
There are some prayers that seem useless.

Some will say the killing fields never happened.
Tell that to the ground-up bone fragment.
Tell that to the ones never coming back.
Tell that to the incinerators working overtime to erase evidence.

Some will say, I should not write this.
Some say, I will be silenced for it.
Some say it threateningly.
They say they know where I eat.
They say they know what I think when I eat breakfast.
They also say that this never happened.
They say this, eating their own words.

The internment camp is lovely today.
My; how the sun glitters off the towers.


Escape

Every night, I plan my perfect escape.
It must be dark, starless cold as a guard’s breath.
I must blend through razor wire.
I must evaporate, levitate as droplets.

When they conduct ROLE CALL, I won’t say ONE.
They will have to start all over with the count.
They won’t realize what is missing will not return.

And that distant woodpecker — will be me
sending messages of rescue
for those still caged,
mostly skin and bones,
mostly less each day.


What Have I Left Behind

A locked door against the approaching night.
A memory of curtain. A rattling window
in disturbed wind.
A kitchen, perhaps, the stove lit,
a pot burned black with neglect.
A blackout. A rug worn down,
exhausted by waiting.
Toothpaste tube strangled to get more information.
The mirror seeing me leaving with nothing to say.
The upstairs bed, unmade, disturbed by the fleeing.
A rush of clothes. Where did I go?
The unsettling surrounding where I used to be.


Bionote

Martin Willitts Jr retired as a Senior Librarian and is living in Syracuse, New York. He is currently a volunteer literacy tutor. He is a visual artist of Victorian and Chinese paper cutouts. He was nominated for 5 Pushcart and 3 Best Of The Net awards. He has three full length books "The Secret Language of the Universe" (March Street Press, 2006), “The Hummingbird” (March Street Press, 2009), and “The Heart Knows, Simply, What It Needs: Poems based on Emily Dickinson, her life and poetry” (Aldrich Press, 2012). His forthcoming poetry books include “Waiting For The Day To Open Its Wings” (UNBOUND Content, 2013), “Art Is the Impression of an Artist” (Edgar and Lenore's Publishing House, 2013), “City Of Tents” (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2013), "A Is for Aorta" (Seven Circles Press, e-book, 2013), "Swimming In the Ladle of Stars" (Kattywompus Press, 2013), and he is the winner of the inaugural Wild Earth Poetry Contest for his full length collection “Searching For What Is Not There” (Hiraeth Press, 2013).

2 Poems by John Grey

MEN WITH NETS

They’re sweeping the water
for fish.
How easy is that.
No wriggling worm ruse.
No patient line dangling,
reeling the bounty in one at a time.
No arm muscles rigid as bricks
fighting the big one.
No shrug of the shoulders,
tossing the minnow free.
It’s just one huge trawl of the ocean,
hauling out whatever’s there.
It’s not like meeting you.
It more like the flood
swamping a thousand homes.
It’s no quiet, canoodling,
interplay of fingers.
But a forest fire,
a flame that doesn’t know
oak from possum,
green from brown.
And yet the fish taste the same,
whether trapped in their flapped thousands,
or pierced alone on a hook.
And so you and I
are in a sea-food restaurant
and we can’t taste the difference.
But we sure can tell the difference.


THRILL-SEEKERS OF THE KING SIZE BED

I don’t know about these things.
Stock car racing? What’s that?
And gun running?
Who’s out there in the jungle
pushing AK47’s?
I know love, I believe.
But not tiger watching in Bengal.
And the feel of a woman.
But cliff diving? Running with the bulls?
There’s no adventure in my holding you
so why does it feel so extraordinary?
Would a spin around Le Mans
provide a bigger thrill?
Or a tight rope walk across Niagara Falls?
One soft, warm, kiss.
Why am I not yearning for
the ten million warm, soft kisses
of downhill skiing?
Or surfing off Oahu?
I make love to you
and I feel as if I’ve done it all.
But something’s missing.
Deep sea diving? White water rafting?
No, we make love again.
The Iditarod never saw that coming.
Mush, my love!


Bionote

John Grey is an Australian born poet, works as financial systems analyst. Recently published in Bryant Poetry Review, Tribeca Poetry Review and the horror anthology, “What Fears Become”with work upcoming in Potomac Review, Hurricane Review and Osiris.
 

1 Poem by Mary Mann

Proof

I've measured my life in email chains
Chats and texts and messages
(Things you wouldn't write home about,
And anyway, no-one write letters anymore)
And the occasional concert
Kiss or twilight run
That's so much bigger than everything else
That it actually hurts
And the time I ran into you
In front of Double Windsor
And you said my voice had changed
Gotten raspier
And I said I didn't know
And it was good to see you
Who knew what my old voice sounded like.


Bionote

Mary Mann is a reader and writer in New York City. She is an MFA candidate in writing at Columbia University. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, New York Magazine and Bookslut, among others.

2 Poems by Joe Massingham

VANCOUVER HAIKU PLUS

Que cerise sera
signals of Vancouver Spring
-que sera sera

Nippon’s pink blossom
blown across north Pacific
Vancouver’s cousins

Vancouver Springtime
pink and white spread all over
Summer’s on the way

Wearing white or pink-
cherry brides and bridesmaids bound
for Easter weddings


Shanghai

Faded facades from
The men that came to Shanghai
to impress those here
Greek myths retold in buildings
Along Huang Pu river


Bionote

Joe Massingham was born in UK but has lived about half his life inAustralia. Retired early because of heart problems and now waits to see medical practitioners, writes and smells the roses. He has lived in Canberra for the past twelve years. He has had work published in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, Eire, USA and India. joeandsal@netspeed.com.au

3 Poems by Samuel Smith

Photo Album: Venezia, 1562

Here we are dancing
in Piazza San Marco.
Pigeons, more pigeons,
a churning bile of gray snow.
And Pulcinella –
we laughed until our throats hurt.
Here's Cassio and
that silly whore Bianca
kissing, downstairs by
the well in the Ca' d'Oro.

Black armor of the sky.
Iago, his smile like a sheath.


Kitsune's Wedding

Sign of good fortune:
rain falling from sunny skies.
Be not proud, Kensei.

In infinite universes once
Musashi said: her dual nature ruptured
the world in threes: Trickster, Mother, Crone.

Nine-tailed Kitsune
smiles like a will-o-the-wisp,
skips into the wood.



Coderain
    When two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion. – Philip K. Dick

1.
Tecumseh bade the leaves to speak.
Code talkers raised the flag at Iwo Jima.
A beam of pink light saved Christopher Dick's life.
Claude Shannon forged a science of signal,
Roland Barthes a cult of noise.
Words ride the drums from Kumasi to Techiman.

2.
Trust the pictures on the screen.
Build an altar to the projectionist.

3.
Rods and cones and ganglia:
our bodies enigma engines.
I call to say it's storming,
drive safely:

my voice encodes
flies through the air
hits a tower.

I touch you,
tongue to the base of your neck.
You shiver ones and zeroes.

4.
These are Psalms of the Cryptodaemonomicon,
each scribble a divine variable,
fugue made dogma:

You cannot outrun the talking drums.


Bionote

Originally hailing from Winston-Salem, NC, Samuel Smith now lives, works, writes and practices his photography in Denver, CO. He'd love it if poets sold millions of copies of their work and played stadium tours, but since that's not the planet he was born on he labors away in the exciting world of marketing by day and plies his craft in the evenings and on weekends, which never last long enough. His work has appeared in places like The New Virginia Review, Poet & Critic, The Cream City Review, storySouth, Pemmican, Uncanny Valley, Amethyst Arsenic, Manifest West and The Dead Mule. He is the publisher and poetry editor for Scholars & Rogues, an online journal of culture, arts, literature and politics.

1 Poem by Walter William Safar

Dreams

When destiny leaves you alone in the dark;
When your mother and father leave you early,
All you have left are hope;
All you have left are Faith;
All you have left are dreams,
Yes, my friend, life rolls along the road of dreams,
And each dream is finished soon;

Travel in peace, dreams of mine,
Into the land of color,
the wonderful land of noble memories,
So that my blind spirit might see through the turquoise moon's eyes,
So that my tired spirit finds its peace in your sacred cradle.
Fly with the breath of Freedom,
So that you may sow the seed of young hope
In the courtyard of heavenly gates;

Travel in peace, dreams of mine,
To honor the many tears haunted by memories,
To honor the many stars haunted by lonely nights,
To honor the many winds haunted by prayers of the unfortunate;


Travel in peace, dreams of mine,
Into distant valleys of saturnine silences.
Find your humble home
In the infinity of human tragedies,
So that you may fraternize many unfortunates
With your merciful existence,
So that my lonely spirit can see the magnificent light
In the fraternal souls of people I hold dear;


When they want to kill your hope,
hoist your flag of dreams
And keep on marching your way,
like a noble soldier of Dreams.


Bionote

WALTER WILLIAM SAFAR was born on August 6^th 1958 in Sherman-Texas . He is the author of a number of a significant number of prose works and novels, including "Leaden fog", "Chastity on sale", "In the flames of passion", "The price of life", "Above the clouds", "The infernal circle", "The scream", "The Devil’s Architect”, "Queen Elizabeth II", as well as a book of poems.

3 Poems by Cheri L. Miller

All Summer

All summer I looked forward

to that rose-gold horizon drawn ahead in the haze,

some place on the other side of this sea.

I waited on the sand in the white sun,

glided through the jade waves

attempting to bathe in each moment.

It’s always slipping by me, slipping through me,

love, heat, a rush of days

of warm wind and water,

an ethereal hand

of light on my shoulder.

Middle Age

 

My chest is freckled from years of sun,

and my breasts sag

so you must cup them in your hands

to kiss them.

I am no longer the Christmas fruit,

yet the irony of the coconut

is not lost on me—

such succulence in a coarse-haired shell.

Clear Mind

White sky, white woods,

and a blue jay--

a single streak of indigo ink

across blank paper.

Bionote

Cheri L. Miller is a poet, fiction writer, creative nonfiction writer, and writing tutor from Baltimore, Maryland. Her poems have appeared in journals across the country, including Rock & Sling: A Journal of Witness, Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts & Letters, Penn-Union, Welter, Snakeskin, and others.

3 Photos by Joneve McCormick

3 Poems by Ali Znaidi

The Olde Word

o word

thou art

stale

o word

thou hast

ailments

just soak

in a bath

of ale

In the Abyss of a Desert Mirage

Prickly pears in succulent stems,

make no bones about! You never

knew

the preciousness of water

until all water drops turned into

flakes flying in the mirage.

The Story with the Meat’s Smell

Does the grass tell stories?

wondered the grasshopper—

a barbecue

prepared in a grassy terrace

of a villa in the countryside.

Bionote

Ali Znaidi (b.1977) lives in Redeyef, Tunisia where he teaches English at Tunisian public secondary schools. His work has appeared in Otoliths, The Tower Journal, streetcake, Ink Sweat and Tears, Mad Swirl, Unlikely Stories: Episode IV, Red Fez, Carcinogenic Poetry, Stride Magazine, and other ezines. His debut poetry chapbook Experimental Ruminations was published in September 2012 by Fowlpox Press (Canada). He also writes flash fiction for the Six Sentence Social Network-http://sixsentences.ning.com/profile/AliZnaidi.

2 Poems by Mbizo Chirasha

I am  a night mare

My breasts are dry of milk in the climate of this heat
My earth ejaculates platinum and uranium
anus of my rock puff pure gas and crude oil
The clay of my heart binds together the dust of my dreams
Forests of my mind sagging with coco beans and coconuts

I am tired of bullet and paparazzi gossip
I am a country eating peanut and bananas
I am the flower of want, whose bloom was pruned by madness,
Whose holy nectar was imbibed by mad drunkards?
I am a night mare, poets and prophets bring back my wildness


I am Congo 11

I am Congo, with my cough riddled voice
I am Congo i see my children bewitched by the wizard of Nile
I am Congo whose clans are foot mats of war gods and goddesses from the east and the west
Iam Congo with emerald in my blood and diamond in my stomach
I drink my tears with triplets’ kayole, kwangware and kiberia,
We ate our stolen coco beans with
Ivory Coast and gold coast
When will chairman Mao, Samora,Neto amilcar of this  earth of  stolen diamonds and dried
Peanuts, that we write our history in blood, sand and granite
Shaping the ideology of generations and the dreams that we eat the eggs of uhuru
And see the dimples of freedom smiling.

Bionote

Mbizo Chirasha is an internationally acclaimed performance poet, writer, and creative projects consultant. He is widely published in more than Seventy-five journals, magazines, and anthologies around the world. He was the poet-in-residence: from 2001-2004 for the Iranian embassy/UN Dialogue among civilizations project; the United Nations Information Centre - 2001-2008; Convener/Event Consultant THIS IS AFRICA POETRY NIGHT 2004 - 2006; official performance poet Zimbabwe International Travel Expo in 2007; Poet in Residence of the International conference of African culture and development/ ICACD 2009; and official Poet Sadc Poetry Festival, NAMIBIA 2009. In 2003 Mbizo was a delegate of Zimbabwe International book fair to the Goteborg international book fair in Sweden . He perfomed at Nordic African Insititute and Swedish writers union.A delegate to the Unesco photo novel writing project in Tanzania, Mbizo is the Official poet in residence for the ISOLA/ international conference of oral literature 2010 in Kenya.Mbizo is Chirasha is widely profiled in both local and abroad media institutions. His poetry books Good Morning President is Published in UK and Whispering Woes of Ganges and Zambezi is published by an Indian/American Publisher Cyber wit Press. A lot of more anthologies are under review by other publishers.Mbizo Chirasha the Founder /Operations/Creative Director of Girl child Creativity Project, the newly founded Urban Colleges Writers Prize. Curator and Producer of GirlchildVoices Fiesta/100 thousand poets for change program in Zimbabwe. Coordinator of Zimbabwe -Nigeria Literary Exchange

3 Poems by A.J. Huffman

Champagne

Liquid stars fly nowhere

in sea of gold, slide

up side of crystal flute, erupt,

tickle nose before diving

down into darkness,

swathing tongue and throat.

Curtains

Patterned ghosts blowing or

still.  Their movements haunt

dreams, nightmares, depending

on angle of light.

Teapot

Screaming tantrum, a temperate

child waiting for responsive touch.

Too late, fire

recedes in a breath, a sip of cup.

Bionote

  

A.J. Huffman is a poet and freelance writer in Daytona Beach, Florida.  She has previously published six collections of poetry all available on Amazon.com.  She has also published her work in numerous national and international literary journals.  Most recently, she has accepted the position as editor for four online poetry journals for Kind of a Hurricane Press ( www.kindofahurricanepress.com ).  Find more about A.J. Huffman, including additional information and links to her work at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000191382454 and https://twitter.com/#!/poetess222. 

1 Poem by Larissa Shmailo

Father of a Ghost (after Stephen Dedalus)

            James Joyce b. February 2

            Hamnet Shakespeare baptized February 2

Father of a ghost, but from the charnel dead!

Truepenny called, but bid his one son read

A woeful bedtime tale. So list: if Hamnet were

A suicide (the rest, what is the rest?); if Shakespeare were

Behorned by Ann (and her way hath will, clear)

And asked the poor young Hamnet to kill the adulterous peer,

(Perhaps to pour the poison in the porches of his ear?)

Cert, he would read just like a crab, ass backward and in fear:

Hamlet (his twin), ou le Distrait, une Pièce de Père Shakespeare,

Ophelia-like, rosemary clad, made mad with that despair.

Or … if the canon ‘gainst self-slaughter held fast,

Would he be murdered with all murdered at last?

And, scarred by family the most,

Who would rise to be his ghost?

Bionote

Larissa Shmailo's poetry, translations, and criticism have appeared in Gargoyle, Barrow Street, Drunken Boat, Fulcrum, The Unbearables Big Book of Sex, Rattapallax, Lungfull!, the Cordite Review; poetry.about.com, BigBridge, MiPoesias, American Translator, Jacket, and over 30 anthologies. Her books of poetry are In Paran (BlazeVOX [books]), the chapbook A Cure for Suicide (Cervena Barva Press), and the e-book Fib Sequence (Argotist Ebooks); her poetry CDs are The No-Net World and Exorcism, available from iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, CDBaby, and Rhapsody. Her original translation of A. Kruchenych's Victory over the Sun is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. She has been a translator for the American Bible Society's Nida Institute for Biblical Scholarship's History of Bible Translation series. Larissa blogs at http://larissashmailo.blogspot.com

3 Poems by Jessica Slote

THREE WINTER POEMS

1.The Hawk

A hawk is tearing apart a bird (I see
a wing and bits of feather fluff ripped) from the ridge of the house extension, across the garden.

I must have just missed the kill.

I came out to sweep the porch and set up a chair as I haven’t
      done in a long time.

(It just flew down to the garden floor with prey hanging from talons—
‘cheep-cheep’—was that predator or still-alive prey?)

It’s a hawk. Saw it in garden several times last winter, but
      not since then.

What else?

Rustling of bamboo bushes—enormous thicket
      in elusive currents of winter air

Prayer bell occasionally moved to sound—its message
      simple, clear:

Now—hear?  Now—here.


2.What is it?

Little birds perch at the tops of tall trees, darting for minor
changes. Pigeons perch securely on rooftop edges—clucking and observing. The garden is at peace—minus the hawk.

 Little thoughts perch at the top of tall ideas, darting for minor
changes. Assumptions perch securely on concept edges, clucking and observing. The mind is at peace—minus the hawk.


3.The Hawk (again)

Hawk in my Heart
Bits of Flesh, Feathers Fly—Ripped
Tear at my Entrails
Guts in Revolution

Brain, Memory, Language—three Sisters
   on a Throbbing Respirator
Pumping out the Same, Old Tune

I’ve been Lonely for a Lifetime
for as Long as I Remember

Clung to your Sleeping Body like
“Man Overboard!”


Bionote

Jessica Slote is a playwright, poet, performer, and teacher. She comes out of theexperimental theater scene of NYC's Lower East Side in the 1980s. She is currently working on "The Next Step: Le Luminarie," the construction of a theater — an imaginary landscape—mirrored by a double construction in the heavens, le luminarie of the gods.

1 Poem by Martin Reckhaus

poem 46 JAZZ
             
                  eddy returns                                                                
with food of the streets
cries
tears
we dry them with our hands
on your eyes
your fingers
your imprint
gentle
our passion
ancient and exiled
the wind sweet
we dream of our courage
outcast
forever with us
and drink the moon milk
we sing

Bionote

Martin Reckhaus (actor, director, poet) is currently composing the dramaturgical score for a new theater work, Le Luminarie, a play about providence and divination. He is a founder of the theater collective, Loretta Auditorium, based in Naples,Italy and the Lower East Side.

Topic 4 for PP Chatroom: What Makes a Poem 'Best'?

Editorial Note

From the pageview statistics, we know that our 3rd topic has been receiving more readerly attention than almost all other postings of the month. This fact is so encouraging that we will continue this more theoretical approach to poetry. In other words, we will try to keep this chatroom open insofar as there are a reasonably good number of visitors dropping by.


The Observation

Over the past two decades or so, we have had increasingly more 'best' poems of every conceivable kind: there are as many 'best' poems as journals, media, places, years, authors, or readers in power. While every judge seems to be authoritative enough to proclaim whatever s/he considers the 'best,' very few have even mentioned in passing why s/he has chosen the piece(s), let alone officially disclose a set of criteria used in the selecting process. At the same time, all common readers could do nothing but acquiesce. The reason is all too understandable: in matters concerning poetry, everything is simply personal and subjective. That is to say, the 'best' poems, if any at all, are 'best' simply because they are most favoured by a privileged reader or a group of privileged readers.


The Question

What are, if any at all, the universally acceptable elements that make a poem 'best'?

Your written comments on or response to the topic are more than welcome in the box below or at yuans@shaw.ca.

PP Call for Submissions

SOME CHANGES TO NOTE:

* Thus far, PP has been featuring 3 selected poets and their artworks every Monday; however, starting from May, PP is to switch into a quarterly publication, with the four issues to be released respectively in early May, August, November and February; 

* Submitters are welcome to send over up to 5 (rather than only 3) poems each time. 

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

WARRANTY: 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.

*All poetic and photographic works are carefully considered year round on a rolling basis for PP's spring, summer, autumn or winter issue;  

* No author information except names and email addresses in your submissions please - we will ask you for a brief professional 3rd-person bionote upon acceptance;

* Multiple and simultaneous submissions, as well as previously published work, are all equally welcome insofar as you hold the copy/publishing rights;

* There is no money exchange involved, except a genuine shared love for words;

* Please paste up to 5 poems in the body of your email text and send them over to yuans@shaw.ca; our response time is shorter than 3 weeks after receipt;

* Please note only those accepted will get a reply - Many thanks & Gooooodluuuuck!