3 Poems by Robert Louis Henry

The Ashes of Eve

If only
I could
touch
the hem
of Freedom's
robe while
he wraps
his arm
around
Chaos'
waist.

Chaos
has the
ashes
of Eve
on her
blouse.

But

really,
I just
miss
when
creating
stale air
didn't
occur
to me.

*Originally published by Greatest Lakes Review (http://greatestlakesreview.weebly.com/july-2010-poems.html)

Cubbyholes #6

Expectation digs her knuckles

just behind my eyes if I refuse

to hold her hand, but moves away

when I try to kiss her.

She wills my legs to grow

a widened stride.

Expectation pins a flag

with yesterday's date

on a map.

She wills my legs to grow and

laughs when I've lost balance.

Her hand in my pocket and the

rest of her drinking the last

moments of magic hour like a

bodyshot out of the horizon's

asshole.

*Originally published in the book, The Evaporation of Hands (but otherwise unpublished)

Continental Arms

If I had continental arms

I would pray a hold on god's beard

I would pants Jesus at a mall in Tennessee

while exchanging fluttery blown kisses

with the Californian sea

If I had continental arms

they'd be dragging bloody in the gravel

with knuckles just bare and bone and bleached  

Bionote

Robert Louis Henry grew up in Tennessee. He writes poetry, prose, and songs. He recently relocated to California, where he works as a freelance writer, editor, and publisher. He's also the publisher at Leaf Garden Press. His latest book, The Evaporation of Hands, is available at Amazon and Smashwords.

2 Poems by Linda M. Crate

mosquito bite

you are a mosquito bite;

it itches and itches to even

look upon your form yet when

you're scratched it provides no

relief, you linger on despite

the fact that you were never

an invited guest; when you go

there will be none that miss

your loathsome presence and none

that will yearn for it, either.

eve's lament

flesh of my flesh you've turned against me
stabbing the life from my veins, breaking my
heart into a thousand pieces; the earth
cried out with his blood and still you
denied your trangression - hate clouded
your mind louder than my love ever did,
and now you've gone where I cannot go;
ripped yourself from the comfort of my arms
that I would have used to shield you
from all the evils that swallowed you whole.

Bionote


Linda Crate is a Pennsylvanian native currently migrated to Maine. She has a degree in English-Literature and her poetry and short stories have appeared in many publications the latest of which include: Birds Eye reView, Mirror Dance, Blue & Yellow Dog, Crisis Chronicles Online Library, Super Flash Fiction, and Dead Snakes.

2 Poems by Dawnell Harrison

The furies

you roam the house
with your fantastical

furies agitating the dogs
normal decorum.

in the desolate light
of your ashen eyes,

red lava runs in your
mind's eye tearing down

each plush forest
with a ruin known

only by volcanoes.
you stalk like a lion,

meditating as the cold
night begins.

last summer's poppies
are all imbedded in ice –

frost polishes the hole
of my pain.


Winter

Winter festers beneath the cold blood of it –
The stark white moon has nothing to do with this.

The squirrels are scant and grow weary of this
Lamenting snow tossing layer after layer

Until everything is as pure white as an eggshell.
Mornings dissolve into silence.

The sun fails us.
Plentitude has no mother here.


Bionote

I have been published in over 60 magazines and journals including The Endicott Review, Abbey, Iconoclast, Nerve Cowboy, Mobius, and many others.

3 Poems by Joshua Meander

An  Ideal  Swordsman              

His goal is balance.  His pledge:

Never recoil when threatened.                                                                         

                                                                                               

His point:  to be vigilant.                                                      

He moves like a proud danseur.                                            

An infuriated charge.

He slashes,  and then retreats.

He thinks fast,  he strikes again,

But blade can split at the hilt.

A downward stroke is ideal:

Rendered opponent must live.

Black Shell

Black-clad intruder is better camouflaged                                          

Than a trap door;  yet for plucking a spider,                                     

A concealed entrance is better than stalking.                                    

Loosened bricks dislodge straw-sandaled assassin.                           

Black-clad prowler spells

Ninja and foul play,

But this scoundrel is known as a sacred spy.

A  samurai said,

“He who poses like midnight

Must then be a veiled bandit.

He who keeps his dagger in a tortoise shell

Pierces then without courage.”

The bamboo tree sees truth vanish on a gale.

Golem

In a ghetto he is the huge freak

Servant to a bearded shopkeeper.

He has clay flesh and works silently.                          

                                                                                    

He is either a former convict                                       

Or a supernatural being.                                              

Most people are uncertain,

So they avoid his wide shadow.

From his gold chain swings an amulet

Engraved with a cryptic inscription.

Does he chant it for preservation?

If rejected by the shopkeeper,

Will he go berserk like a twister,

Or disappear in his own quicksand?


Bionote

Joshua Meander, best known as publisher and host of Nomad's Choir Poetry Journal and New York City Open Mic. of the same name. His writing is dramatic and heartfelt. He works the graveyard shift in the security dept. of a French hotel. A world traveler himself which inspires his Muse.

3 Poems by Dwight Pavlovic

Untitled #1

Only the screen across a tone,

Alberti's green and rose.

A selfish character to enclose a man,

The wind and world personified –

Fragile being framed in the arms of Horae.

Untitled #3

Cold colors drawn by long fingers

From the tapping of keys.

Shapes of sensuous white

Moving with the rhythm of light.

Untitled #5

The day grew cold–

Sprawled out on a rock.

Exhalations of jagged flatness,

Long legs breathed by a gaping sun

Stride across my back.

Bionote

Dwight Pavlovic is a self-taught multimedia artist and writer based in Morgantown, WV, focusing on poetry and collage as his primary creative vehicles. His poetry has been showcased in various small journals and zines, with a first collection titled Hang a Laughing Man forthcoming from the Patient Sounds arts collective. In addition, he works as the volunteer editor of international DIY/music magazine Decoder and helps manage a boutique cassette label called Crash Symbols. Through a process of creative re-framing, as with collage, his pursuit of each project and medium connects in a more or less abstract associative framework, informing and changing the structure and pursuit of each. In the context of collaborative efforts like Decoder and Crash Symbols, that structure is idiosyncratic but ultimately designed to function as a space for other devotees of music who, in their pursuit of art and living, share a desire to keep their industry adding up with their emotion. To that end, the two entities evolve syncretically with a rigorous focus on projecting positive practices and advocating for participants in the ever burgeoning American creative underground.

3 Poems by Thaddeus Rutkowski

BUTTERFLIES AND VULTURES

Looking for migrating butterflies,

I see two clusters of vultures
circling around carrion
or an animal that’s about to be carrion.

About 80 miles in from the coast,
I see one, then two, then three monarchs
flying from north to south.

The butterflies remind me
of when I stood outside in a childhood yard
and watched dozens of them float past
on their way to Mexico.

Which group is stronger,

and which will come for me?
The butterflies or the vultures?

IN THE TUNNEL

Not much fun to be working in the tunnel,

when you could be on the train,
heading somewhere interesting, like Far Rockaway,
a place you’ve never been.

But here you are, supervising guys in Day-Glo vests,
directing them because you are the engineer.
You are the one who builds the tracks
and makes the trains run on schedule.

You get so bored you sit on a rail,
prop your chin on your hand, and fall asleep …

until you hear the blast of a horn in your ear
and see the glaring headlight of a waiting train.

The motorman leans out his small window
and yells, “You’re on the wrong track!”

And you see how close you’ve come to oblivion
by resting yourself on the railroad to perdition.

THREE HANAIKUS

Dream:

Jim Chu

moves our bed.

It

Can’t be

Wong. Feels White.

Yard

empty. Birds

flew to school.

Bionote

Thaddeus Rutkowski is the author of the innovative novels Haywire, Tetched and Roughhouse. He teaches at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn and at the Writer's Voice of the West Side YMCA in Manhattan. He was awarded a 2012 fellowship in fiction writing from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

3 Poems by Elaine Woo

You are the Earth
 
My father, you are the earth,
the soil upon which I stand,
rich and warm.  My roots
extend and search and seek.
You are the heavens to which
I aspire, the cosmos from which
I spun, towards which I stretch.

Frolicking Orcas

Orcas spy-hop,

poke heads above the water,

leap and land atop waves

on their backs,

lob-tail, and pec slap,

roll on their sides to

smack a fin on the sea’s surface,

trill, whistle, grunt,

snort air through

their blowholes, squeak,

moan and creak a dialect.

Black Chi In, White Chi Out

Breathe in not being heard
Breathe out not being heard
Breathe in demandingness
Breathe out demandingness
Breathe in neediness
Breathe out neediness
Breathe in invasiveness
Breathe out invasiveness
Breathe in chaos
Breathe out peace


Bionote

Elaine Woo is the current Membership Co-ordinator for CWILA (Canadian Women in the Literary Arts).  Her most recent poems appear in V6A, a finalist for the City of Vancouver's Book Award 2012, The Enpipe Line, Earthwalk, and Arc Poetry Magazine.

3 Poems by Kongyin

Beaver

I am a beaver
hiding in seclusion
regardless of the weather
or the alternating seasons.
Waggling my flat tail
I stay content with
my reclusive life.

I have what I need.
I have done what needs doing.
This modest paradise
compensates for my hard work.

If the outside world
is splendid or miserable
so what?
No cause, no karma:
form itself is emptiness;
emptiness itself is form.

Happy or lonely
rich or poor
so what?
With my enigmatic smile
I face it all.
For what I care about
is the real Eternal.

The Lost Bird

The beautiful bird is gone,
gone forever.
When it took off,
we all saw its shadow,
and all heard its last song,
but none of us looked up.
Instead we pretended to be busy.
We are used to hiding despair
in our business.

Prayer

Lord
I ask very little:
please give me a tiny hut for shelter
a little bit of water and bread.
And if You give me an ox for farming
I will be missing nothing in my life.

After a day of labour
toward Your last ray of sunset
I will sing the sweetest song from my deepest heart
watching the smile on Your lips.

Lord
I ask very much:
please give me a richness of hope
an abundance of wisdom
and a surfeit of love.

So if I have no safe haven
nor water, nor bread
nor even an old ox as my companion
I will sing the sweetest song from my deepest heart
watching the smile on Your lips.

Bionote

Kongyin is an immigrant to Canada from China and holds a Masters degree from the University of British Columbia. She has published two books in English (Gooby and the Dream-walkerand Sun Grass) and four collections of poetry, two in both Chinese and English (The Lantern Carrier and Today is a Path) and the other two (A Simple Heart and Songs of A Mountaineer) in Chinese, English, and French.
Kongyin has published more than a dozen short stories about overseas Chinese. One of her stories, published by China Readers, was reprinted by seventeen additional magazines and later adapted into a TV show in China. Readers voted another of her short stories as their choice for most touching. In addition to teaching full time, Kongyin had her own poetry column in two Chinese newspapers: Vancouver Weekly and Toronto Weekly.
Books Written by Kongyin
---. Gooby and the Dream-walker. Cape Town: Kima Global, South Africa, 2011. Print.
---. Sun Grass. Cape Town: Kima Global, South Africa, 2011. Print.
---. Taiyangcao. Taipei: The Liberal Arts Press, Taiwan, 2010. Print.
---. The Lantern Carrier. Seattle: Tianya Literature Press, USA, 2011. Print.
---. Today is a Path. Guangzhou: The Milky Way Publishing CO, China, 2009. Print.
---. Songs of a Mountaineer. Guangzhou: The Milky Way Publishing, China, 2011. Print.
---. Simple Heart. Guangzhou: The Milky Way Publishing CO, China, 2012. Print.
Book Translated by Kongyin
---. Escape to Life. Beijing: Press of Liberation Army, China, 2005. Print

3 Photos by Zhijian Tao

Bionote

Tao Zhijian is a translator, scholar and amateur photographer. He is a member of the Chinese Writers Association in Quebec, Canada. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from McGill University, and has under his name book titles inlcuding Drawing the Dragon: Western European Reinvention of China (monograph), Bibliography Complex: Fundamentals of Librarianship and Knowledge Management (translation from Chinese to English), and The Fortuities of a Shoe - a Collection of Poems (translation from Chinese to English). A number of his critical essays, prose writings and poems have also appeared in scholarly journals and other publications in China, Europe as well as in North America.

2 Poems by George Lai Yuan

Hiyaku Haiku: Japanese Memories

a trace of a scent
a tune of a melody
a glimpse of a scene

it teases your mind
tugs at your subconsciousness
and in an instant

bursts as from a dam
flooding senses unready
wakes aches forgotten

held for a second
now fading into a dream
beyond the sunland


On the Road: Free Verse Found While Driving

Road closed

Construction ahead

Expect delay

Detour

Construction ahead

Expect delay

Detour

Road closed

Expect delay

Detour

Road closed

Construction ahead

Detour

Road closed

Construction ahead

Expect delay

Bionote

George Lai Yuan, born in China and raised in Canada, currently works as a platform architect in California, where he is huntting an affordable house with his Korean wife Hyunjung. George enjoys reading poetry from time to time, and this is his first poetic publication. 

3 Photos by Fa Qing

Bionote:

After nearly 30 years of study and research in geology, nutritional science and pharmacology, Dr. Dannia Hu is right now a happy housewife, passionate traveller and amateur photographer as well as a dedicated dharma practitioner. Currently she lives in Vancouver, one of the most beautiful places on earth.

2 Poems by Jim Davis

Night Birds of Monterey

The ocean leaves subtle brine

On their skin as it dries. The day is spent swimming

Through pages of thought: catalogue of romantics,

Thieves of history. The question, Can you sleep?

Can you sleep through the night

Without turning over, she said

Yes, I can sleep.

Waves hushed the lingering gulls

Pecking at small pieces of meat near the shore.

Palm fronds, the chirp of an otter, touching chimes.

Yes, I am sleeping.

Towels hung over the porch rail. He reaches out

Over hills, carved rivers, the folding fields between them

To touch her hip. Elegant Terns fishing the lagoon

Have settled. The last Snowy Plover buries itself in sand.

He reaches. Nothing. I am sleeping, she said

To the wall of an empty room. Silence

Interrupted by a freight hauler calling

To coyotes as it splits the prairie like a steel comb.

You’re dreaming, she said. You must be.

Beating Pacific

Beheading saintdom, so goes the plot of those pining hours:

night, creeping like mice along pantry baseboards. Climb upon the

unencumbered platform, raw slices of fresh canvas, unafraid

of the void, covered with the color of evening, pressing

the level weave of gesso’d fabric. In somber hill country,

constellations like Cepheus, Draco, Ponce de León, &

a surprising delivery of Salt Peanuts by Dizzie

Gillespie, Charlie Parker & three other horn blowers

that no one could name. Original light begins the same, with-

in an object, then without, spread over the known world like our

immediate terror, lost in a crowd. In a sea of hands

& hips, hairy, vascular calves, or blue jeans with unidentifiable

script of their seams, the forgotten child will grab the closest hand –

lost only upon the realization that the hand he holds

is as foreign as the hard rib of an eel hidden in the dinner he will eat

years later, sitting on the lip of a fountain near the site

of the housing market crash. White mist. He thinks if he ever saw
a pineapple tree, how hard he would shake it. My God, he sighs,

I’d ring its trunk & catch the breathless fruit in its fall. What night,

he insists, beating the Pacific with his fist, holding tight

to the girl of his dreams: what star-lit, jug-wine, bell-struck night.

Bionote

In addition to my career as a teacher, poetry and painting are my greatest passions. I graduated from Knox College with a degree in Studio Art, and I am hoping to begin the Creative Writing MFA program at Northwestern University in the spring. I have recently been nominated for Best of the Net consideration by Lascaux Review, I have won the Line Zero Poetry Contest, Eye on Life Poetry Prize (2^nd Place), named Runner-Up for the Best Modern Poem by Chicago’s Journal of Modern Poetry, and I have received multiple Editor's Choice awards. My work has appeared in Seneca Review, Whitefish Review, Blue Mesa Review, Poetry Quarterly, and Contemporary American Voices, among others. My first chapbook, Feel and Beat Again, will soon be available from MiTe Press, of which Boston Literary Magazine said: "Canny, brilliant and unerringly insightful, Jim Davis lives in a world where nothing is ordinary."

3 Poems by Patrick Williamson

Foxed I was

Insight flashes, inner look
grabs night by the gab, unearths
me from gloom, the ferreted
pack of bunk-tries, nowt
to what flows from thought fox
that pads bracken words,
shows me what I grope for,
black the without-eye, no, no, no.

The light lingers, sight unveils
self, cranny, with-eye,
the no-mans land stretching.
Leaf-bound the voice,
matter, now. Breathe deep,
underbelly, to wit, me
kept buried so long, stirs.
Break cover. Track the scent.


The yew

cannot be touched
its overshadows all mortals

its bark lies in strips
on the rotten earth

its berries splat red stuff
we trample on

its kernel is poison
do not crunch

the yew has withstood
tempests, war, foulness

its needles say
words are mere gusts

its roots converse
with the bedrock

it sought the light
found the other bank

it is not a ghost
it is a shade

but who isn't


Wood

Criss-cross root
enmeshed, dusk

a curtain over white
hides you, watch

me stagger on, slide
on moss, skirting

badly, barbed strands,
my coat snags,

flakes trickle in, show
me untrodden snow,

the copse thickens,
the wood turns dark

Bionote

PATRICK WILLIAMSON was born in Madrid in 1960 and lives near Paris, France. His most recent poetry collections are Locked in, or out?, Red Ceilings Press, and Bacon, Bits, & Buriton, Corrupt Press, both in 2011. He has translated the selected poems of Tunisian poet Tahar Bekri (Inconnues Saisons / Unknown Seasons, L’Harmattan, Paris, 1999) and Quebecois poet Gilles Cyr (The Graph of Roads, Guernica Editions, 2008). He is the editor of The Parley tree, an anthology of poets from French-speaking Africa and the Arab world, (Arc Publications, UK, 2012).

3 Poems by Lauren Stone

“when I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.”

Randall Jarrell, 1954 “The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner”

No words had ever felt so real to me.

No filter, just guttural distinctions

start to comprehend what it means to be.

Hoarding, inhaling unique creations,

striving to understand, ingesting, all

literature becomes my heroin

I’ve lost myself, a servant to its call

consuming Ginsberg. I commit sin.

“Keith Richards ain’t got nothing on me, bitch.”

I felt those words tingle down to my toes

when I wake haunted by that phantom itch

going back to that image of the hose.

I’m never satisfied, I search for more

crawling to libraries looking to score.

Sea Girl: Revisited

Your salt laden tears,

reflecting pools of beauty,

splash against my face.

Lost in your serenity

I immerse myself in you.

Starfish envy you,

a beauty unparalleled.

most would recede, but

the rabid sea cucumber

begs for entrance to your depths.

Permitting access

I am struck by your wave of

generosity

you take me inside of you

once lost, you guide me back home.

Werepuppy

I’m the worst werewolf ever.

There is nothing terrifying about my bark.

My claws are dainty and unthreatening.

I thought that becoming a demonic creature of the night

would at least make me less perky, but

no I had to be a were-Pomeranian,

An Armani purse dog, six inches tall,

Plush like a feather duster.

The last time I changed I went on the hunt,

there was not an ankle in sight left unbitten.

Soon they will be like me. But it wasn’t easy.

A lady kicked me in the face hard and I went flying,

her black pointy Versace shot-gunning me across the street.

But determined as I was, I followed her home, slipped in

through a cat door in the garage, and stole her shoes.

I guess that wasn’t very werewolf of me.

Oh well, all I wanted was to be a creature of the night, kick some ass,

show the goth girls from high school at the ten-year reunion

who was really edgy and in league with Satan.

But I can’t even turn into a werewolf right.

I knew I should have been a vampire.

(First Appeared in Bank Heavy Press's Pom-Pom-Pomeranian)

Bionote

Lauren Stone is the owner of Loyal Stone Press, and the editor of the quarterly literary journal Prospective: a Journal of Speculation. Stone's poetry has appeared in Verdad Magazine, Bank Heavy Press's publications Pom-Pom-Pomeranian, Husbands and Malfeasant Dogs, and "Cthulhu a Love Story". Short fiction can be found in Menage-a-20, "Cthulhu a Love Story", and Bartleby Snopes's Post-Experimentalism. More information on Loyal Stone Press can be found at prospectivejournal.tumblr.com

Topic 2 for PP Chatroom: What Is Poetry?

Editorial Note

Since we posted our first PP chatroom topic about whether poetry is dead or not, we have received little written note; nor will many people long remember, but we are happy to know and report that there have been quite a number of pageviews; that is to say, as some readers stop and take a brief look, what we are trying to do here does mean more than just a promotional experiment, and that is exactly what we can hope for at the moment.


The Observation

It seems that there are more kinds of poetry now than ever before. In addition to all sub-genres of traditional poetry, such as Epic, Ode, Sonnets, Sestina, Ballad, Blank Verse, Couplet, Elegy and Dramatic Monologue, we have had every kind of free verse, from visual/concrete and minimalist to various innovative/experimental pieces. Some poems have regular or irregular line divisions; some do not at all; others may have or may not have words or verbal content; and still others could be moving pictures or static collages. This situation clearly demonstrates that poetry as a literary genre (phenomena?) has been expanding continuously in terms of theme, form and style. Given the way contemporary poetry evolves, one might expect that it will someday develop into an all-embracing art form to include all verbal and visual artworks.


The Question

What are, if any at all, the most distinct defining elements of poetry, or, what is poetry?


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

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

Comment by Michael Dalvean

Greetings all,

I am new to this forum so please forgive any mistakes I make in regard to protocol etc.

My main reason for joining is to get some feedback on some work I have done on the analysis of poetry. Basically, what I have done is uuse some rather amazing software to look at how less experienced poets use language as opposed to more experienced of "professional" poets. THe main finding is that professional as opposed to amateur poets tend to use more concrete language than amateur poets and also use fewer emotional and psychological terms than amateur poets. Thus, the dictum "show rather than tell" does seem to apply.


Because it is possible to quantify what makes a "professional" poem I have used this information to give a rank to a number of poets whose work appears in the anthology 'Contemporary American Poetry' (Poulin & Waters, 2006). That is I rank contemporary American poems on a scale from "amateur" to "professional". The upshot is that, of the poems in the selection, 'Working Late' by Louis Simpson is the most archetypically professional (contains more concrete language and less emotional and psychological language while 'Blackberry Eating' Galway Kinnell is the least archetypically professional.

I would be interested to hear the response of anyone to the basic research so that I can refine the methods in the light of criticisms and suggestions.

To look at the paper please go to

http://ssrn.com/abstract=2208452

and select "Download This Paper".

I hope to hear from you soon.

Regards,

Michael Dalvean

Call for Poetry Submissions to PP's Spring Issue

WHY, OR WHY NOT POETRY PACIFIC?

Among thousands of online and print publications of literature/poetry already available to writers and readers, why, just why Poetry Pacific??

Well, succinctly put, Poetry Pacific is unique in two most significant ways:::

I. Poetry Pacific offers the most possible freedom and convenience to you as a poetry submitter::
As a rule, you can submit any number of poems of any kind, any time of the year in any manner you like: previously unpublished or otherwise (insofar as you still hold the copy/publishing right); single or multiple, individually targeted or simultaneous, online or via snailmail, although we may prefer considering 3 shorter pieces pasted in the body of an email at a time. It would be kind of you to mention PP as a writing credit, but please do not feel obliged to do so, nor will we bother you with any other requests.

II. Poetry Pacific tries to give you the most and longest possible literary exposure and reputation::
Your work will enjoy human longevity. Although PP has an extremely humble start, it is to expand into a serious publishing enterprise. At very least, it is a 2-generation program, which will naturally last much longer than hundreds, and even thousands, of other literary outlets.  As time goes by, PP will introduce more special features to attract readerly attention. PP believes that its editorial emphasis on word's worth rather than on Wordsworth will eventually win the wind.

That being so, then just why, why not Poetry Pacific?


IMPORTANT NOTICE::

Beginning in May 2013, Poetry Pacific is to change into a quarterly publication. The first (spring) issue will be released in early May 2013. From this moment on, all submissions received will accordingly be considered for this upcoming issue as well as for the subsequent ones. PP is open in every conceivable way.

For more information on submissions, please see PP's Submission Guidelines on the right side.

POETRY SUBMISSIONS ARE WELCOME YEAR ROUND AT yuans@shaw.ca!!