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*Originally published in the book, The Evaporation of Hands (but otherwise unpublished)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

3 Poems by B.Z. Niditcch

ON THE METRO

With dark
detectable sounds
puffing on the red line
on West Street
with snow falling
in a leaky roof
on the subway
losing the map
and address
for my gig,
I take out
my pawned sax
from an old
motel suitcase
from another country
and play slowly
in perpetual motion
on the metro
to earn
a few dollars
before midnight
between train doors
as a would be
Anna Kerenina
steps up to take
her life
after hearing
my cadenza
and moves away.


SURVIVAL BOXES

The threshold
of the homeless
in survival boxes
chattering faces
outside the windows
on frozen fields
at the edge of town
dawn chills
sleepers on flagstone
by a row
of the overpowered.


IN THE BREAKDOWN LANE

Traffic in a row
of road rage
in the darkness
of a moldy mirror
at midnight
near a strip club
the star performer
remakes
her lips redder
as a heart beat
stops dead
by a hunky hitchhiker
on the train tracks
with his valuables
on one long leg
and arm
with a record
of forced entry
desperation
as she lets
him in the front
and he drives
her crazy
for food
as he opens
his basket
and devours.

Bionote

B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including:  Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; Le Guepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest);  Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others.  He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.
   

3 Poems by Tracy Lynn Repchuk

Random Control

Inspired rituals from earthly connections

as hands create, nurture and plant

Joyous celebrations in every occasion

through the spiritual healing of colour.

Random delights enhance and entrance

as life’s story is told

on tiles as varied as mankind

Each able to move and shift to change

the outcome on any given day.

So it becomes a matter of choice -

whether it be dark or bright,

coloured, grey, fluorescent,

with the excitement of the future

under your control

Like a strategic game of chess

you move your piece

into the best position

Not to overcome – 

but to oversee.

Resolutions

I knew it was time

For me to look hard at what I had done

Or not done

At what I wanted to do

But did not do

At the carnage that lay in my wake

Of broken dreams that would have to once again

Be picked up, and scraped off the poured concrete

and confronted.

Unfulfilled, unconscious barriers 

Silently seep through 

and comfortably take their place 

while I continuously walked face first

into the brick wall that is my life.

It doesn’t happen in one day

That - I would have noticed

It is the tiny, insidious little events

Once accumulated to become 

The Mount Everest of reality 

for such paltry desires. 

And as each occurrence strangles

Hope screams

My floral bloom shrinks to the prickly

State of cactus

Living off of shards of water 

Surrounded by breathless air

But still - 

It is a new year, and I will take this

minimalistic opportunity to cast

my shredded net into the ocean

of this game I chose to play

and pray that I once again do not

get caught on life’s discards

so that I may catch my whale.

Serenade of the cicadas

Black-eyed blossoms invisibly 

intoxicate from distant woodlands

where emerald streams of healthy crops cascade along turquoise horizons;

and hints of sun-kissed buttercups invite me to dance.

From a long hibernation I emerge

as buds press against rigid soil  

I swing lazily carving breezes while whispering winds promise spring;

under the covered porch that hugs the house majestically.

Baked peaches torment from sweet sills

and my senses salivate 

anticipating this evening’s delights;

among drones suckling nectar from receptive chambers.

A wind-chapped smile erupts 

to rejoice my favorite season

as lapping waves of sunshine nourish;

and clinking cubes marry tart lemons.

Draping trees fill with the operatic melodies

resonating organs 

debut to a command performance;

where friction and limb triumph.

Heated cardinals and brown speckled jockos meditate

inhaling the heavenly view

I drift outwards;

licking colorful clouds and bands of jade over parched fields.

Handfuls of divine light 

gift-wrap my spirit

until temporal sounds transcend me back;

to the symphonic serenade of the cicadas.

Bionote


Tracy Lynn Repchuk (born 1965) is a Canadian writer and poet. Repchuk is the president and founder of the Canadian Federation of Poets and Editor of Poetry Canada Magazine. Repchuk lives in Burbank, California.

2 Poems by Wanda Morrow Clevenger

every word

it is in the span
of uncensored
long together
long drive home
from lobster and
tall mango drink
meals
that fixes mete
of every word
I ever wanted
to say


outside bird

if time physically stood
still then is at 6:50 AM
in the hum of electric fan
stir of heady bud;
bed covers world buoyant
with dim dawn with
a bird outside trilling 

Bionote

Wanda Morrow Clevenger is the author of This Same Small Town in Each of Us (Edgar & Lenore's Publishing House; 2011). Her published work of 181 pieces appear in 66 print and electronic publications. A collection of poetry is tentatively scheduled for release in late 2013 or early 2014. For access to her blog It's All Just Telling Tales Out of School, visit: http://wlc-wlcblog.blogspot.com/

3 Prose Poems by Adele Kenny

When Everything You’ve Done and Everything That’s Happened to You Is Not What Your Life Is

She’s not sure how her life happened or why—the evidence is contradictory (unwise choices, the illnesses, grief). A goldfinch sings in the pine, its wing a fragile shadow cast through lingering light—the shape of silence.

There are things she keeps from herself—the nightmare she dreamt and re-dreamt until, finally, it meant nothing. The bullet passed through the leaf—the leaf didn’t fall.

The stone circle in her yard and the little house are solid in their places—ringed with water and birds. The sapling she planted is firm in the earth. Her puppy sleeps beside her, tail curled under his small body (the other dogs’ ghosts always close). What else did she want? Things she hoped for already begun—this is all good. Good. And enough.

Even Now

(For My Father)

Memory is easy here, in springtime’s rimless light—and only a little rain to pattern the sky. There’s a faint (perhaps remembered) scent of wild violet. Something sweet that stays. Shadows tumble through clouds. It’s been more than thirty years—your death a grief that only now begins to know its name. All this time, I’ve rebuilt you out of dead leaves and wind, dumb with a feeling that even now, I can’t express—as if that dark were your happiness and you ran to it, years too young to be dead; as if, even now, you might open your hand and reach through time to where I wait.

Of Other

It isn’t now or this patch of blue autumn, light skimmed like milk without substance (its ghost on my lips). Or the way trees darken before the sky, the way light slants through pines (my neighbor’s lamp or the moon). It’s not the way night feels when I walk in March, when snow melts into mud, and I smell grass again; when I know, without seeing, that tight buds open high in the branches.

It’s not the expected order of things but moments of other (when something startles you into knowing something other), and the heaviness lifts inside you.

Tonight, wind pulled leaves from the sky to my feet and, suddenly (without warning) a deer leapt from the thicket behind me—leapt and disappeared—past me as I passed myself, my body filled with absence, with air, a perfect mold of the light gone through it.

Bionote

Adele Kenny is the author of twenty-three books (poetry & nonfiction). Her poems, reviews, and articles have been published worldwide, and her poems have appeared in books and anthologies published by Crown, Tuttle, Shambhala, and McGraw-Hill. She is the recipient of various awards, including two poetry fellowships from the NJ State Arts Council, a Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and the 2012 International Book Award for Poetry. A former creative writing professor in the College of New Rochelle’s Graduate School, she is founding director of the Carriage House Poetry Series and poetry editor of Tiferet Journal. Active in readings and in private and agency-sponsored workshops, she has read in the US, England, Ireland, and France, and has twice been a featured reader at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. Website: www.Adelekenny.com/  The Music In It Poetry Blog: http://adelekenny.blogspot.com/

2 Poems by Felino A. Soriano

facilitation

of open                        hands

                        flex in the sleeping aggregations of achromatic

devotion

                                                            hands enter gauge of spectral warmth then

                                                deliver

as do smiles’ proprietary

devotion to

                                                                                    exhale oval embraces

Of road in the neighboring silence

restructured celluloid enables

prose of paused enigmas…

                                                                        either of the each rendition of throat/spectral speech

                                                                                    (as does the terminal approach

                                    to

            confiding mathematics: inward into self’s composite interaction²) spoken

contamination is the years’ prior focus:

alone this

silent pathway

            this

diameter of temporal thrust, of the questioning immanent relay, again

the subjective cannot commune among second trusting travelling

                        therefore reconfiguring

analogies enter                                                road of sacred road:

desire among echoes and intertwined

reactions

[Author's note: These poems are from my ongoing collection entitled Of these voices.]


Bionote

Felino A. Soriano has authored nearly five dozen collections of poetry, including the collaborative volume with poet, Heller Levinson and visual artist, Linda Lynch, Hinge Trio (La Alameda Press, 2012) rhythm:s (Fowlpox Press, 2012), and Quartet Dialogues (white sky ebooks, 2012). He publishes the online endeavors Counterexample Poetics and Differentia Press. His work finds foundation in philosophical studies and connection to various idioms of jazz music. He lives in California with his wife and family and is the director of supported living and independent living programs providing supports to adults with developmental disabilities. For further information, please visit www.felinoasoriano.info.

1 Poem by Art Heifetz

Night Wanderers

Like a sailboat striving

To catch the wind,

I shift from side to side.

Each time I get up and return

You awaken too         

As if in loving you

Our two lives have become

Synchronized.

You tuck the paisley comforter

Beneath my chin

And take my hand in yours

As if I were a frightened child

Seeking reassurance

From  his mother’s warmth.

When I slept at Mike and Gert’s apartment,

I listened to their comings and goings

Until I  learned to recognize

Their endless ablutions

And medical complaints.

Light on, light off,

They paraded through the night.

Now I too have joined the ranks

Of the night wanderers

It happened all too suddenly

The evening I looked into the mirror

And found my father’s tired eyes

Staring back at me

With such serious intent

I had to catch my breath

Bionote

Art Heifetz teaches ESL to refugees in Richmond, Va. He has published 50 poems in 5 countries since June. He is an ex-Peace Corps volunteer and retired State Farm agent. Life begins at 66.

3 Photos by Joneve McCormick

Bionote

Photographer: Joneve McCormick, Isla Vista, California.  Joneve is a poet, writer, editor, translator and photographer.

1 Photo by Liu Yu

Waiting: Two Vague Leaves vs A Whole Clear Season

Bionote

Liu Yu, a native of Gong-an, Hubei Province, used to work as an administrator at Jingzhou Poeple's Bank of China before retirement. Now she enjoys playing huapai, taking pictures and cooking for her family. Publication credits include Hubei Daily and Collection of Biographical Sketches of Advanced Financial Workers (Hong Kong).

3 Poems by Laurence Overmire

Autumnal

the clap of trees

withering in the dusk

the sad dropping of emaciate leaf

secrets whispered in a desolate wind

we cannot understand

nor touch the sorrow

the tramping of feet

the crush of sticks in dust

life’s travails mocked

in timelessness of starlight

the unheard voice

lost in a moment of breath.

Crisis

What seemed so great

in the moment

was

in the scheme of things

very small

Only death and its

incumbent couriers

merit the attention

of so strict a life’s

expectancy

And then, and only then

in the calm eye of the storm

can one see

clearly

that which was forbidden

was only a temporary latch

on that pearly gate of

Knowing.

Earthtones

There are times in a life

When words fail

Like rain to a gutter

Waste away

The crying of clouds

Thunderously exhausted

Gray pillows no comfort

The head too hard to find

Solace

In the repellant crust of

Stone.


Bionote

Laurence Overmire is the author of the recently released The One Idea That Saves The World: A Call to Conscience and A Call to Action. He has had a multi-faceted career as poet, author, actor, director, educator, and genealogist. His award-winning poetry has been widely published in hundreds of journals, magazines and anthologies worldwide. Overmire is an advocate for peace, justice, human and animal rights, and the environment. www.laurenceovermire.com

3 Poems by Fide ERKEN

Flower  Language

flowers have miraculous colours
they send us love with their perfumes;
a different language have flowers

even if i learn all the languages in the world
it won't be possible for me to tell about love
as well as fragrant flowers

i smell love watching their colours
and want to say "i love you"
in the flower-language to my lover

In a Daisy Field

I'm rolling in a poetry field, Where so many daisies abound, A soft breeze bringing their mist. I'm smelling them, Satisfied with watching their White, yellow appearance, So I don't need to write a poem. Then your name is echoed Amongst the petals, Spreading this wonderful sound All around the waving daisies. It's enough to hear The most beautiful name I've ever known. We smile to each other, Me and the daisies. Walls

The World of complex ideas,
different faiths,
little tolerance,
mostly, lack of complaisance

Look at the flowers with every colour,
full of love, together
flowers have easily climbed over
all the walls!

Bionote

Fide ERKEN was born in Bursa, in 1967. She spent the first seven years of her childhood in Trilye, a pretty village of Mudanya. Then she came to Bursa with her family. She finished primary, secondary and high schools in Bursa. After high school she attended the department of Industrial Engineering in Middle East Technical University. After finishing the prep and first classes there she left that school and entered the department of English in Uludag University. She was graduated from this school in the year 1991. She's still been working as an English teacher in Bursa. Fide Erken says that poetry is in people's nature and that she first was tempted by this emotional current in primary school. She stepped the beginning leading her to further points in poetry by having two awards in poetry competitions when she was in high school. Some of her poems were first published in Öner art magazine and in a local newspaper journal. She's been taken attention with her English poems for some years. Her poems have been published in some internet sites and magazines. The fluency in her poems she writes integrating love of people and nature determinates her place in the poetry world. Fide Erken is married and has two daughters.

3 Haiku by Arunansu Banerjee

haiku 

1.

eyes of crow

a rickshaw-puller

by the road

2.

rose

in the breeze…

waiting for you

3.

how many spring nights

would you remain this distant

winter’s moon

Bionote

Born and brought up in Kolkata, Arunansu writes poems out of passion. Has been contributing to online journals as The Peregrine Muse, Here and Now, etc. More of Arunansu’s poems can be read at http://www.arunansub.blogspot.in/ A keen photographer, he likes enthusing poetic images with visuals. His photographic blog is http://www.arunansu-myphotos.blogspot.in/

1 Poem by R. S. Deese

Road Runner

Heaven or the promised land
Eternity or soon
Once I spy the vanishing point
I'm out of this cartoon
Beep beep

Bionote

R.S. Deese grew up in Claremont, California. After earning his bachelor’s degree in history from UC Berkeley, he traveled to East Asia, where he taught English Composition at Nanjing University in China. He first came to Boston University to study poetry and then returned to earn his PhD in history in 2007. He currently teaches 20th Century World History in BU's College of General Studies. His work has also been published in Agni, The Berkeley Poetry Review, Endeavour, MungBeing, New Times Los Angeles, and The Quarterly.

3 Poems by Joan McNerney

SeaScape I

Hearing waves from a distance and
feeling sea breezes brush our faces,
it seemed a century before we
came to the ocean.

So blue and bright to our eyes
its rhythm broke chains of
unremarkable days.

Over cool sand we ran and you picked
three perfect shells which fit
inside each other.  Swimming away in
that moving expanse below kiss
of fine spray and splashes.

With clouds cumulus we drifted while
gulls circled the island.  Together we
discovered beds of morning glories
climbing soft dunes

SeaScape II

Let's dive in ocean hiss swish
riding with bluewhales, bluewaves.
Brush of foam and windy ripples
sunbeams chasing quicksilver fish.

Floating through our shining world
fragrant clouds, feathery clouds.
We weave one arm after another
wearing bracelets of salt pearl.

SeaScape  III

My mind is an ocean
where swimmers, surfers,
sun worshippers cavort.

Long salty hair
held between
their teeth.
Flourishing
wild flowered gowns
…streams of silk
    waves of taffeta
    splashy lace.

They sail through
my watery face
combing my eyes
whispering in my ears.

Alone, under a pointillist sky.
Gulls flying around me.
Black waters touched by
moon of vague prophecy.

Bionote

Joan McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines such as Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Camel Saloon Books on Blog, Blueline, Vine Leaves, Spectrum, and three Bright Spring Press Anthologies. She has been nominated three times for Best of the Net. Four of her books have been published by fine literary presses. She has recited her work at the National Arts Club, New York City, State University of New York, Oneonta, McNay Art Institute, San Antonio and other distinguished venues. A recent reading was sponsored by the American Academy of Poetry. Her latest title is Having Lunch with the Sky, A.P.D. Press, Albany, New York. 

3 Poems by John M. Bennett

Sinking Mirror

,seeping ,closing ,clawing

,caving ,runting ,nodding

,negging ,aiming ,roiling

,flaming ,towelling ,gagging

,ising ,gaming ,noming

,torquing ,clouding ,yetting

,iffing ,blaming ,cleaning

,stinking ,claiming ,latheing

,loaning ,dogging ,mocking

,marking all the ladders

all the lathered mouths

all the ticking necks

tumbling in the faucet stream

bound to glory

bl

dic e

k own

lob stor

enfogic

....sur.............................. .   .    .

olvido

the ssorted sshadow chimess a

cor nur mured where my lap

ssed th ought’ss a crissc

raw  ))meaty foot mile((  ah

dang led russt ling in the d

rain my ssee med t haw

a ss pelt leaf de lettered

ssp ring deletreadoss loss g

ritoss in son deadoss la ssom

bra del ssissmo  ]]ful

minante[[  “sslept beneath the

dusst” the towerr ssplit the

tongue lathered toward the f

inal para graph  )sseeping

ssailing ,sstinging greasse( 

was the wind a fork ?

Bionote

John M. Bennett has published over 400 books and chapbooks of poetry and other materials.  Among the most recent are rOlling COMBers (Potes & Poets Press), MAILER LEAVES HAM (Pantograph Press), LOOSE WATCH (Invisible Press), CHAC PROSTIBULARIO (with Ivan Arguelles; Pavement Saw Press), HISTORIETAS ALFABETICAS (Luna Bisonte Prods), PUBLIC CUBE (Luna Bisonte Prods), THE PEEL (Anabasis Press), GLUE (xPress(ed)), LAP GUN CUT (with F. A. Nettelbeck; Luna Bisonte Prods),  INSTRUCTION BOOK (Luna Bisonte Prods), la M al (Blue Lion Books), CANTAR DEL HUFF (Luna Bisonte Prods), SOUND DIRT (with Jim Leftwich; Luna Bisonte Prods), BACKWORDS (Blue Lion Books), NOS (Redfox Press), D RAIN B LOOM (with Scott Helmes; xPress(ed)), CHANGDENTS (Offerta Speciale), L ENTES (Blue Lion Books), NOS (Redfoxpress), SPITTING DDREAMS (Blue Lion Books), ONDA (with Tom Cassidy; Luna Bisonte Prods), 30 DIALOGOS SONOROS (with Martín Gubbins; Luna Bisonte Prods), BANGING THE STONE (WITH Jim Leftwich; Luna Bisonte Prods), FASTER NIH (Luna Bisonte Prods); RREVES (Editions du Silence); NEOLIPIC (Argotist); LAS CABEZAS MAYAS/MAYA HEADS (Luna Bisonte Prods); BALAM MALAB (Logan Elm Press); LA VISTA GANCHA (Luna Bisonte Prods); THE SOCK SACK/UNFINISHED FICTIONS/MORE INSERTS (with Richard Kostelanetz; Luna Bisonte Prods); T ICK TICK TIC K (Chalked Editions and White Sky Books); THIS IS VISUAL POETRY (This is Visual Poetry); EL HUMO LETRADO: POESÍA EN ESPAÑOL (Chalk Editions; 2nd ed. White Sky Books); ZABOD (Tonerworks); TEXTIS GLOBBOLALICUS (3 vols.; mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press); NITLATOA (Luna Bisonte Prods); OHIO GRIMES AND MISTED MEANIES (with Ben Bennett, Bob Marsh, Jack Wright; Edgetone Records); SUMO MI TOSIS (White Sky Books); CORRESPONDENCE 1979-1983 (with Davi Det Hompson; Luna Bisonte Prods); THE GNAT’S WINDOW (Luna Bisonte Prods); DRILLING FOR SUIT MYSTERY (with Matthew T. Stolte; Luna Bisonte Prods); OBJECT OBJET (with Nicolas Carras; Luna Bisonte Prods); CARAARAC & EL TÍTULO INVISIBLE (Luna Bisonte Prods); LIBER X (Luna Bisonte Prods; CUITLACOCHTLI (Xexoxial Editions); and BLOCK (Luna Bisonte Prods).  He has published, exhibited and performed his word art worldwide in thousands of publications and venues.  He was editor and publisher of LOST AND FOUND TIMES (1975-2005), and is Curator of the Avant Writing Collection at The Ohio State University Libraries.  Richard Kostelanetz has called him “the seminal American poet of my generation”.  His work, publications, and papers are collected in several major institutions, including Washington University (St. Louis), SUNY Buffalo, The Ohio State University, The Museum of Modern Art, and other major libraries.  His PhD (UCLA 1970) is in Latin American Literature.