Near Noon in Naselle, Washington, 23 July 2011, After Du Fu
Beside green grasses,
motionless in the warm calm,
the sun beats down on
where I sit alone today.
There are no clouds up
in the bright, wide, pure azure.
A faint, white half-moon
floats along this vast highway.
Among the poets
living now I have no name.
Official ranking
leaves me out despite my health.
I'm drifting, and yet,
really, what more am I than
a single swallow
here between the sky and earth?
Lady Wei's Pupil
His writing was as light as floating clouds,
as vigorous as a startled dragon
across the paper, on the silken shrouds,
or dipping ink slabs down into Ink Pond,
where he would watch the geese go gliding by
upon the tiny wavelets in the mist,
or swimming when the sun was in the sky;
the way they moved their necks he moved his wrist.
He took the brush, the ink stick and ink stone
and penetrated to three-quarters of
the wood. His Preface reached right to the bone
of Emperor Taizong. He wrote in love,
this General of the Right Army, he,
the Censor of K'uaichi, Wang Xizhi.
The Painting of Wu Li (circa 1632-1718), Spring Comes to the Lake.
Along Lake Dibian it blows vertically
down from the mountain peaks, down to its southern shore,
caressing spring breeze Fuliu, ah, breathlessly,
past grassy slopes to willows growing at the floor.
Here Wu Li's fine brush stroke and light green tones and shade
create a most remarkable and lovely core.
Along that sweeping curve, the harmony conveyed
includes small swallows, sparrows, geese and egrets, rest-
ing or in flight, and leafed trees elegantly made.
The peacefulness everywhere arrayed and blessed,
breathtaking in meticulous simplicity,
perhaps shows earliest some traces from the West.
Bionote
WU "SACRED BEE"LI is a mild-mannered poet and literary critic of old-style Chinese literature. His influences include T'ao Y ü an-ming, T'ang poetry, and landscape painter/calligraphy poet Wu Li. He likes Chinese food, and, although he likes so many cuisines, like dim-sum dishes taken in yum-sha style, because of his nature, he particularly likes Zhejiang dishes which are not greasy, have fresh, soft flavors, and possess fine, mellow fragrances.
Wednesday, 5 November 2014
1 Poem by Sreyash Sarkar
The Optical Symphony
I heard the light in all its jubilance:
The tunes, like recuerdos of a passing feast,
The notes, that lingered in the stairs
Encrusted in uncouth undulation,
Lay words deceived and afflicted.
Rhapsodical moments crossed woods
Left their ethereal motion
Under shadowed trees,
Bitten words afloat in the air
Disappeared in the land of magpies;
And cotton trees made their roots
Through untrodden paths.
My audibility looked upon in solitude-
An illuminated world waited in distress
An extracted existence amidst grandiosity.
An incised tongue, I shall affix
Under the stairs,
Away from the sun,
To arouse extinct desires
To arouse forgotten words
To arouse a deluge....
With fingers on the flute,
The cowherd shall play on,
And I shall see how...
Avian words can etherize trees...
Bionote
Sreyash Sarkar is a poet, a qualified painter, a practising Hindustani Classical musician and an aspiring Electrical Engineer.Educated in Kolkata and Bangalore, he has been a student correspondent at The Statesman, Kolkata from his school, South Point. In 2012, in an international poetry competition organized in memoir of Yeats, his poem was shortlisted among 40 other poets from all over the world. His interview was published in the 'The Arty Legume', where he was asked to speak on cubism, existentialism in art and intrusion in a painting. He has been extensively featured in "The Gooseberry Bushes", " Muses", " The Literary Jewels", "Tagore for us", " The Country Cake-Stall" , " The Orange Orchard" etc. Besides, being a freelance writer for several magazines, he is the editor-in-chief of Kalomer Kalomishak, a bilingual magazine, which he founded in 2013.
I heard the light in all its jubilance:
The tunes, like recuerdos of a passing feast,
The notes, that lingered in the stairs
Encrusted in uncouth undulation,
Lay words deceived and afflicted.
Rhapsodical moments crossed woods
Left their ethereal motion
Under shadowed trees,
Bitten words afloat in the air
Disappeared in the land of magpies;
And cotton trees made their roots
Through untrodden paths.
My audibility looked upon in solitude-
An illuminated world waited in distress
An extracted existence amidst grandiosity.
An incised tongue, I shall affix
Under the stairs,
Away from the sun,
To arouse extinct desires
To arouse forgotten words
To arouse a deluge....
With fingers on the flute,
The cowherd shall play on,
And I shall see how...
Avian words can etherize trees...
Bionote
Sreyash Sarkar is a poet, a qualified painter, a practising Hindustani Classical musician and an aspiring Electrical Engineer.Educated in Kolkata and Bangalore, he has been a student correspondent at The Statesman, Kolkata from his school, South Point. In 2012, in an international poetry competition organized in memoir of Yeats, his poem was shortlisted among 40 other poets from all over the world. His interview was published in the 'The Arty Legume', where he was asked to speak on cubism, existentialism in art and intrusion in a painting. He has been extensively featured in "The Gooseberry Bushes", " Muses", " The Literary Jewels", "Tagore for us", " The Country Cake-Stall" , " The Orange Orchard" etc. Besides, being a freelance writer for several magazines, he is the editor-in-chief of Kalomer Kalomishak, a bilingual magazine, which he founded in 2013.
5 Haiku by Ban’ya Natsuishi
氷の喜び
Joy of Ice
夏石番矢 日本
Ban’ya Natsuishi Japan
英訳 夏石番矢 エリック・セランド
English translations by Ban’ya NATSUISHI & Eric SELLAND
剣の宇宙軸飛ぶ遠い遠い氷の上
The sword’s cosmic axis
jumping far―
far away over the ice
未来の神の頭の中に氷を植える
I plant ice
in the head of
the god of the future
氷の喜び氷の王の足の下
Joy of ice
under the feet of
the king of ice
落葉のようなこの世で私ひたすら眠い
In this world
like a fallen leaf
I am intensely sleepy
氷の劇場ピリオドを打つ赤い指
Theater of ice:
a red finger marks it
with a period
Bionote
Bionote
Ban'ya Natsuishi
which is the penname of Masayuki Inui, was born in Aioi City, Hyôgo Prefecture, Japan in 1955. Prominent as an international promoter of haiku writing and translation. He studied at Tokyo University where he received a master degree in Comparative Literature and Culture in 1981. In 1992 he was appointed Professor at Meiji University where he continues to teach. In 1993 he gave lectures at Jilin University in China, he was invited to haiku meeting in 1994 in Germany, in 1995 in Italy. From 1996 to 1998 a guest research fellow at Paris 7th University. In 1997 he held “Contemporary Haiku” event in Provence of France. In 1998 with Sayumi Kamakura, he founded international haiku quarterly "Ginyu", became its Publisher and Editor-in-Chief. In 2000, after attendance to Global Haiku Festival in USA, he co-founded the World Haiku Association, in Slovenia. Currently works as the association’s Director. In 2001 attended to Vilenica Poetry Festival in Slovenia, in 2003 to Struga Poetry Evenings in Macedonia, in the same year worked as the Chairman of The Steering Committee for the 2nd World Haiku Association Conference which was held in Japan. In 2004 he was invited to Poetry at Porto Santo in Portugal. In 2005 he attended to the 3rd World Haiku Association Conference in Bulgaria, the 3rd Wellington International Poetry Festival and presided international haiku session of Euro-Japan Poetry Festival in Tokyo. In 2006 he was invited to Poetry Spring in Vilnius of Lithuania and Ohrid P.E.N. Conference in Macedonia. In 2007 he visited Inner Mongolia and Mongolia to promote haiku writing there and held the 4th World Haiku Association Conference in Tokyo as its Chair. In 2008, after attendance to poetry festivals in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania & Italy, he inaugurated Tokyo Poetry Festival 2008 as its Director. In 2009 after attendance to Lahti International Writers’ Reunion 2009 in Finland, he co-organized Druskininkai Poetic Fall & the 5th World Haiku Association Conference 2009 in Lithuania with Kornelijus Platelis. In 2010 he attended to World Haiku Festival Pecs 2010 in Hungary and the 10th Sha’ar International Poetry Festival 2010 in Israel. In 2011, after attended to the 21st Medellin Poetry Festival in Colombia, he held the 2nd Tokyo Poetry Festival & the 6th World Haiku Association Conference 2011 in Tokyo, as its Director. In 2013 attended to the 7th World Haiku Association Conference Medellin, in 2014 scheduled to attend to the Meeting for Haiku in Vietnamese in Hanoi City. Natsuishi is the greatest haiku master after classic haiku master Basho Matsuo.
Among his awards are: in 1980 he was recommended as Poet of the Year by Haiku-hyôron, in 1981 he won First Prize in a competition sponsored by haiku monthly Haiku-kenkyû, in 1984 the Shii-no-ki Prize, in 1991 the Modern Haiku Association Prize, in 2002 the Hekigodô Kawahigashi Prize of the 21st Century Ehime Haiku Prize, in 2008 AZsacra International Poetry Award for Taj Mahal Review, in 2013 Sarah and Moïse Russo Poetry Award For Taj Mahal Review June 2013 issue.
Main Japanese publication:
The Diary of Everyday Hunting (Ryôjô-ki), Seichi-sha, 1983.
Poetics of Haiku, Seichi-sha, 1983.
Métropolitique, Bokuyô-sha, 1985.
Rhythm in the Vacuum (Shinkû-ritsu), Shichô-sha, 1986.
Dictionary of Keywords for Contemporary Haiku, Rippu-shobô, 1990.
The Fugue of Gods(Kamigami no Fûga), Kôeidô-shoten, 1990.
Opera in the Human Body (Jintai Opera), Shoshi-yamada, 1990.
Waves of Joy (Rakurô), Shoshi-yamada, 1992.
Poetic Spirit of Genius, Yûshorin, 1993.
The Science of Megaliths and Big Trees (Kyoseki Kyoboku Gaku), Shoshi-yamada, 1995.
Haiku: A Century’s Quest , Kôdansha, 1995 (edited).
Contemporary Haiku Manuel, Rippu-shobô, 1996.
Haiku Is Our Friend, Kyôiku-shuppan, 1997.
Earth Pilgrimage (Chikyû Junrei), Rippu-shobô, 1998.
Haiku Troubadours 2000, Ginyu Press, 2000 (edited).
Collected Haiku Poems by Ban’ya Natsuishi: Crossing Borders (Collected Early Haiku: Roaring River and Drifting included in this publication), Chûseki-sha, 2001.
Chibimaruko-chan’s Haiku Class Room, Shûei-sha, 2002 (edited).
A Guide to World Haiku, Chûseki-sha, 2003.
World Haiku 2005: No. 1, Nishida-shoten, 2004 (edited).
World Haiku 2006: No. 2, Shichigatsudo, 2005 (edited).
Right Eye in Twilight (Migime no Byakuya), Chûseki-sha, 2006.
World Haiku 2007: No. 3, Shichigatsudo, 2007 (edited).
Renku: A través do ar / Through the Air/A travers l’air, Shichigatsudo, 2007 (co-authored with Casimiro de Brito).
Tenbô Gendai no Shiika Vol. 10, Meiji-shoin, 2007 (co-authored).
World Haiku 2008: No. 4, Shichigatsudo, 2008 (edited).
Flying Pope: 161 Haiku, Koorosha, 2008.
World Haiku 2009: No. 5, Shichigatsudo, 2009 (edited).
Nichiyôbi no Zuisô 2008, Nihon-keizai-shinbun-shuppansha, 2009 (co-authored).
Labyrinth of Vilnius, Shichigatsudo, 2009.
World Haiku 2010: No. 6, Shichigatsudo, 2010 (edited).
Haiku Jûômujin, Chûseki-sha, 2010 (co-authored with Sayumi Kamakura).
World Haiku 2011: No. 7, Shichigatsudo, 2011 (edited).
World Haiku Association Anthology 2011, Shichigatsudo, 2011 (edited).
World Haiku 2012: No. 8, Shichigatsudo, 2012 (edited).
Black Card, Sunagoya-shobo, 2012.
World Haiku 2013: No. 9, Shichigatsudo, 2013 (edited).
Reading Korean “Savoir”, Cuon, 2014 (co-authored).
World Haiku 2014 No. 10, Shichigatsudo, 2014 (edited).
Main Overseas publication:
Haiku: antichi e moderni, Garzanti Editore, Italy, 1996 (co-authored).
A Future Waterfall: 100 Haiku from the Japanese, Red Moon Press, USA, 1999 & 2004.
Romanje po Zemlji, Društvo Apokalipsa, Slovenia, 2000.
Цветята на Вятьра, Matom, Bulgaria, 2001.
Poesia Sempre NÚMERO 17, Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, Brazil, Brazil, 2002 (co-authored).
Haiku: Poetry Ancient & Modern, MQP, UK, 2002 (co-authored).
Haiku: the leaves are back on the tree, Greece, 2002 (co-authored).
Ombres et Lumières, LCR, Bulgaria, 2003 (co-authored).
Haiku: Poésie anciennes et Modernes, Édition Vega, France, 2003 (co-authored).
Странный Ветер, Иностранка, Russia, 2003 (co-authored).
The Road: world haiku, Ango Boy, Bulgaria, 2004 (co-authored).
Ribnik tišine: slovenska haiku antologija, Društvo Apokalipsa, Slovenia, 2005 (co-authored).
L’Anthologie du Poème Bref, Les Dossiers d’Aquitaine, France, 2005 (co-authored).
Right Eye in Twilight, Wasteland Press, USA, 2006.
ÎMBRĂŢIŞAREA PLANETELOR (THE EMBRACE OF PLANETS), Edidura Făt-Frumos, Romania, 2006.
Endless Helix: Haiku and Short Poems, Cyberwit.net, India, 2007 & 2009.
Le bleu du martin pêcheur: Haïkus, L'iroli, Beauvais, France, 2007 (co-authored).
MADARAK / Birds / 鳥: 50 HAIKU, Balassi Kiadó, Hungary, 2007.
Pellegrinaggio terrestre / Earth Pilgrimage / 地球巡礼, Albalibri Editore, Italy, 2007.
Flying Pope: 127 Haiku / 空飛ぶ法王 127俳句, Cyberwit.net, India, 2008.
Balsis no mākoņiem / Voices from the Clouds / 雲から声, Minerva, Latvia, 2008.
MUNDUS poesie per un'etica del rifiuto, Valtrend Editore Napoli, Italy, 2008 (co-authored).
Flying Pope: 127 Haiku / 空飛ぶ法王 127俳句, Cyberwit.net, India, 2008.
Balsis no mākoņiem / Voices from the Clouds / 雲から声, Minerva, Latvia, 2008.
MUNDUS poesie per un'etica del rifiuto, Valtrend Editore Napoli, Italy, 2008 (co-authored).
ŐSI FENYŐ, tr. by Vihar Judit, Napkút Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary, 2008 (co-authored).
KONCENTRIČNI KRUGOVI, PUNTA, tr. by Dragan J. Ristić, Serbia, 2009 .
KONCENTRIČNI KRUGOVI, PUNTA, tr. by Dragan J. Ristić, Serbia, 2009 .
Music of the Twentieth Century, A. P. F. Publisher, USA, 2010 (co-authored).
Hybrid Paradise / ハイブリッド天国, Cyberwit.net, India, 2010.
Il Papa che vola: 44 haiku / 空飛ぶ法王 44俳句, Rupe Mutevole, Italy, 2010.
Il Papa che vola: 44 haiku / 空飛ぶ法王 44俳句, Rupe Mutevole, Italy, 2010.
The Individual Voice 16, Helicon Poetry Society, Israel, Tel-Aviv, Israel, 2011(co-authored).
Turquoise Milk: Selected Haiku of Ban’ya Natsuishi / ターコイズ・ミルク 夏石番矢選句集, Red Moon Press, USA, 2011.
A TENGER VILÁGA / The World of the Sea / 海の世界 50 HAIKU, Balassi Kiadó, Hungary, 2012.
L’Archipel des séismes: Écrits du Japon après le 11 mars 2011, Editions Philippe Picquier, 2012, France (co-authored).
Japanese Modern Haiku, Cyberwit.net, India, 2012 (co-authored with Sayumi Kamakura).
LA VILLE: HAÏKU Anthologie bilingue de poètes bulgares, français et francophones, Фараго, 2012, Bulgaria (co-authored).
Kamesan’s World Haiku Anthology on War, Violence and Human Rights Violation, Kamesan Books, 2012, USA (co-authored).
Kamesan’s World Haiku Anthology on War, Violence and Human Rights Violation, Kamesan Books, 2012, USA (co-authored).
ブラックカード / Black Card / Tarjeta negra, Cyberwit.net, India, 2013.
空壺 / El cántaro vacío / The Empty Amphora 選集 / Antología / Anthology 7o Conferencia de la Asociación Mundial de Haiku 2013 / 7th World Haiku Association Conference 2013 Medellín Colombia, Todográficas, 2013, Colombia (co-authored).
POEMS FOR THE HAZARA: AN ANTHOLOGY AND COLLABORATIVE POEM BY 125 POETS FROM 68 COUNTRIES, Full Page Publishing, USA (co-authored).
CASCADE DU FUTUR : 100 haïkus traduits du japonais par Jean Antonini et keiko Tajima, L’Harmattan, 2014, France.
5 Haiku by David McMurray
Ghost stories
grin from ear to ear
pig on a spit
(Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems, 2013, Vol. 8, p. 66, see:
https://sites.google.com/site/ worldhaikureview2/jan-2014- issue/blyth-award )
All our eggs
sizzling sunnyside up
maple lake
(Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems, 2013, Vol. 8, p. 63)
White lilies
the feeding tube
removed
(Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems, 2013, Vol. 8, p. 63)
White magnolia
clearly reflected
on windows
(Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems, 2013, Vol. 8, p. 64)
new surname
carved deeply into
summerwood
(Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems, 2013, Vol. 8, p. 63)
Bionote
David McMurray has been writing the syndicated Asahi Haikuist Network column since April 1995, first for the Asahi Evening News, including the Asahi Japan issues in California and New York, then for the Asahi International Herald Tribune and currently for the Asahi Shimbun digital. A professor at the International University of Kagoshima in Japan, his graduate students research haiku. David won the R.H. Blyth award in 2013 for his book Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems.
grin from ear to ear
pig on a spit
(Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems, 2013, Vol. 8, p. 66, see:
https://sites.google.com/site/ worldhaikureview2/jan-2014- issue/blyth-award )
All our eggs
sizzling sunnyside up
maple lake
(Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems, 2013, Vol. 8, p. 63)
White lilies
the feeding tube
removed
(Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems, 2013, Vol. 8, p. 63)
White magnolia
clearly reflected
on windows
(Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems, 2013, Vol. 8, p. 64)
new surname
carved deeply into
summerwood
(Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems, 2013, Vol. 8, p. 63)
Bionote
David McMurray has been writing the syndicated Asahi Haikuist Network column since April 1995, first for the Asahi Evening News, including the Asahi Japan issues in California and New York, then for the Asahi International Herald Tribune and currently for the Asahi Shimbun digital. A professor at the International University of Kagoshima in Japan, his graduate students research haiku. David won the R.H. Blyth award in 2013 for his book Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems.
3 Poems by Michael Lee Johnson
Untitled I Walk (V2)
(Psychiatric Assessment)
Untitled I walk
through life
with a shrink
from Yugoslavia,
who is as large as Bigfoot.
With a novel in one hand,
and shaking his fingers at me
with the other,
he wants to control me with a shovel,
tie me in knot balls, emotional twisters,
and squeeze the emotional pages
out of my life like a twisted sponge.
I retaliate, control him back,
wage war in a vicarious cycle
squeeze his testicles like electrical wires
inside my mind’s eye,
cut his tongue with razors,
dull his clinical words.
Play his game, only better.
He picks up the play phone,
threatens to call the police,
leashing me in my corner
like a trapped dog
forces me to bark
into submission
like a beagle basset bitch.
He treats me with word babble.
I tell him he is a damn Ukrainian idiot.
Peeved off I race
to the parking lot, head to the bushes,
like a blue racer snake threatened,
hop bunny rabbit into my S-10
Chevy pick-up truck,
memo pad in hand,
scribbling ruminating notes
I surrender naked until my next prescription,
untitled I walk.
-2007-
(R-2013)
Cut Grass in Snow (V3)
(Picture Available)
All daylong
night is my storm lantern.
I carry it into the farmland
cutting into my harvest emotions
covered by snow
edge them in half
in front of me
see me open, bleeding.
I am seed like a small orange
pit me out and devour me
spit pulp and seed
I step on jagged edges
of my feelings, sense my pain
cut stretched skin with glass shavings
torture under toes hurt bad with pain.
Pitch that stuff with dark
black top tar if it makes
you feel relief.
Do not laugh at me, a circus clown down,
I am 66; my dimples show smiles, ripples, age.
This day is a lawn mower
even in Canadian December.
Machinery is shacked-up, covered.
I plow beneath the white surface
cut rotten leaves beneath settled snow.
The aggravation,
cultivation nonsense hell with my runny nose.
In spring, the grass never pops up right.
All day, night is my storm lantern.
-2007-
(R-2013)
Summer is Dying
(Version 3)
Outside summer is dying into fall,
blue daddy petunias sprout ears−
hear the beginning of night chills.
In their yellow window box
they cuddle up and fear death together.
The balcony sliding door
is poorly insulated, and a cold draft
creeps into all the spare rooms.
-2007-
(R-2013)
Bionote
Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. Today he is a poet, freelance writer, photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois, who has been published in more than 750 small press magazines in twenty-five countries, and he edits seven poetry sites. Author's website: http://poetryman.mysite.com/. Michael is the author of The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom (136-page book), several chapbooks of poetry, including From Which Place the Morning Rises and Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems. He also has over 69 poetry videos on YouTube.
(Psychiatric Assessment)
Untitled I walk
through life
with a shrink
from Yugoslavia,
who is as large as Bigfoot.
With a novel in one hand,
and shaking his fingers at me
with the other,
he wants to control me with a shovel,
tie me in knot balls, emotional twisters,
and squeeze the emotional pages
out of my life like a twisted sponge.
I retaliate, control him back,
wage war in a vicarious cycle
squeeze his testicles like electrical wires
inside my mind’s eye,
cut his tongue with razors,
dull his clinical words.
Play his game, only better.
He picks up the play phone,
threatens to call the police,
leashing me in my corner
like a trapped dog
forces me to bark
into submission
like a beagle basset bitch.
He treats me with word babble.
I tell him he is a damn Ukrainian idiot.
Peeved off I race
to the parking lot, head to the bushes,
like a blue racer snake threatened,
hop bunny rabbit into my S-10
Chevy pick-up truck,
memo pad in hand,
scribbling ruminating notes
I surrender naked until my next prescription,
untitled I walk.
-2007-
(R-2013)
Cut Grass in Snow (V3)
(Picture Available)
All daylong
night is my storm lantern.
I carry it into the farmland
cutting into my harvest emotions
covered by snow
edge them in half
in front of me
see me open, bleeding.
I am seed like a small orange
pit me out and devour me
spit pulp and seed
I step on jagged edges
of my feelings, sense my pain
cut stretched skin with glass shavings
torture under toes hurt bad with pain.
Pitch that stuff with dark
black top tar if it makes
you feel relief.
Do not laugh at me, a circus clown down,
I am 66; my dimples show smiles, ripples, age.
This day is a lawn mower
even in Canadian December.
Machinery is shacked-up, covered.
I plow beneath the white surface
cut rotten leaves beneath settled snow.
The aggravation,
cultivation nonsense hell with my runny nose.
In spring, the grass never pops up right.
All day, night is my storm lantern.
-2007-
(R-2013)
Summer is Dying
(Version 3)
Outside summer is dying into fall,
blue daddy petunias sprout ears−
hear the beginning of night chills.
In their yellow window box
they cuddle up and fear death together.
The balcony sliding door
is poorly insulated, and a cold draft
creeps into all the spare rooms.
-2007-
(R-2013)
Bionote
Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. Today he is a poet, freelance writer, photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois, who has been published in more than 750 small press magazines in twenty-five countries, and he edits seven poetry sites. Author's website: http://poetryman.mysite.com/. Michael is the author of The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom (136-page book), several chapbooks of poetry, including From Which Place the Morning Rises and Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems. He also has over 69 poetry videos on YouTube.
1 Poem by John Grey
THE REAL ME
The doctor holds my x-ray up to the light.
So that's me is it.
He examines it for some time
though his face remains noncommittal.
It looks to me like Jesus on the cross
with angel wings.
He finally has to admit that I'm healthy.
So why all the death symbols?
It takes the incessant ping
of electromagnetic radiation
to get where I'm really coming from.
That's where the spots get worse than tricky.
That's where the fluids want pumping
not pissing out.
My doctor knows who I am.
The rest of you are just faking it.
"How did it go?" my wife asks.
"I'm Jesus on the cross
with angel wings."
"Is that good or bad?"
Good for me.
Bad but necessary for Jesus.
Fact is, our love is based on a lie.
If only she knew my chest cut open,
my fleshy valuables inside.
Or could get up close with my bones.
Or see my heart for the pumping
myogenic muscular organ it is.
But no,
she had to go and marry
the outside of me.
And ugly or handsome,
you still can't die of your face.
Bionote
John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in International Poetry Review, Vallum and the science fiction anthology, “The Kennedy Curse” with work upcoming in Bryant Literary Magazine, Natural Bridge and the Oyez Review.
The doctor holds my x-ray up to the light.
So that's me is it.
He examines it for some time
though his face remains noncommittal.
It looks to me like Jesus on the cross
with angel wings.
He finally has to admit that I'm healthy.
So why all the death symbols?
It takes the incessant ping
of electromagnetic radiation
to get where I'm really coming from.
That's where the spots get worse than tricky.
That's where the fluids want pumping
not pissing out.
My doctor knows who I am.
The rest of you are just faking it.
"How did it go?" my wife asks.
"I'm Jesus on the cross
with angel wings."
"Is that good or bad?"
Good for me.
Bad but necessary for Jesus.
Fact is, our love is based on a lie.
If only she knew my chest cut open,
my fleshy valuables inside.
Or could get up close with my bones.
Or see my heart for the pumping
myogenic muscular organ it is.
But no,
she had to go and marry
the outside of me.
And ugly or handsome,
you still can't die of your face.
Bionote
John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in International Poetry Review, Vallum and the science fiction anthology, “The Kennedy Curse” with work upcoming in Bryant Literary Magazine, Natural Bridge and the Oyez Review.
3 Poems By Perry L. Powell
Holdings
They attack at night, the worries…
During the day there are conferences and calls and
email and work to oversee and whatnot.
But at night they arrive
in full phalanx―
the day's regrets,
the people I have hurt,
the naked moments, the
other reasons for endings.
But in the morning your skin reminds me
I am no longer my own
to do with as I wish.
Lately
Lately,
this sense of final things
has come to me
with some broad determination,
it has come to me
gently,
like an old friend who remembers your faults
and almost forgives them,
it has come to me
with the sweet sadness of kidnapped regrets,
and the occasional found treasure,
it has come to me
(in all fairness)
with that kind of relieved resignation
in knowing that nothing is really nothing,
and it has come to me
to say
that the moment
(that moment)
may not be
dreadful
after all.
The Book
I wish I could read it again,
that book I read once
when the sun burned a path
over library shelves
onto sparkling pages.
The words remain.
But they are not the words
I read then.
Once there were cities in the desert
along the Silk Road.
Now there are too many stories
to remember one.
I will turn the next page
in my sleep.
Bionote
Perry L. Powell is a systems analyst who lives and writes near Atlanta, Georgia. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Pacific, A Handful of Stones, A Hundred Gourds, Atavic Poetry, Dead Snakes, Decades Review, Deep Water literary Journal, Frogpond, Haiku Presence, Indigo Rising, Lucid Rhythms, Mobius The Journal of Social Change, Prune Juice, Quantum Poetry Magazine, Ribbons, small stones, The Blue Hour, The Camel Saloon, The Credo, The Foliate Oak, The Heron's Nest, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Lyric, The Mind[less] Muse, The Rotary Dial, Turtle Island Quarterly, and Wolf Willow Journal.
They attack at night, the worries…
During the day there are conferences and calls and
email and work to oversee and whatnot.
But at night they arrive
in full phalanx―
the day's regrets,
the people I have hurt,
the naked moments, the
other reasons for endings.
But in the morning your skin reminds me
I am no longer my own
to do with as I wish.
Lately
Lately,
this sense of final things
has come to me
with some broad determination,
it has come to me
gently,
like an old friend who remembers your faults
and almost forgives them,
it has come to me
with the sweet sadness of kidnapped regrets,
and the occasional found treasure,
it has come to me
(in all fairness)
with that kind of relieved resignation
in knowing that nothing is really nothing,
and it has come to me
to say
that the moment
(that moment)
may not be
dreadful
after all.
The Book
I wish I could read it again,
that book I read once
when the sun burned a path
over library shelves
onto sparkling pages.
The words remain.
But they are not the words
I read then.
Once there were cities in the desert
along the Silk Road.
Now there are too many stories
to remember one.
I will turn the next page
in my sleep.
Bionote
Perry L. Powell is a systems analyst who lives and writes near Atlanta, Georgia. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Pacific, A Handful of Stones, A Hundred Gourds, Atavic Poetry, Dead Snakes, Decades Review, Deep Water literary Journal, Frogpond, Haiku Presence, Indigo Rising, Lucid Rhythms, Mobius The Journal of Social Change, Prune Juice, Quantum Poetry Magazine, Ribbons, small stones, The Blue Hour, The Camel Saloon, The Credo, The Foliate Oak, The Heron's Nest, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Lyric, The Mind[less] Muse, The Rotary Dial, Turtle Island Quarterly, and Wolf Willow Journal.
1 Poem by Sam Rapth
The Passing Cloud - Poetry
For a fractional moment,
I envied on the passing cloud
and its exceptionally successful
and long-lasting passport and visa...
The technique that it hides
about its virtual boundaries
would be most wanted cross-border strategy
for countries today...
Wondering how it carries
those gallons of water
across continents...
The humble white
hanky of mother earth
always falls down
on my feet
only to resurrect later...
Bionote
I am Sam Rapth working as a software architect from India. My Poems & Prose have so far been featured at The Tongue Magazine (UK),The Static Movement Magazine (UK),The Inclement Poetry Magazine (UK),The Taj Mahal Review (India),The Yellow Mama Magazine (US),The International who's who (US),The Recusant Magazine (UK),The Ascent Aspirations Magazine (US) and The Mad Swirl Magazine (US).
For a fractional moment,
I envied on the passing cloud
and its exceptionally successful
and long-lasting passport and visa...
The technique that it hides
about its virtual boundaries
would be most wanted cross-border strategy
for countries today...
Wondering how it carries
those gallons of water
across continents...
The humble white
hanky of mother earth
always falls down
on my feet
only to resurrect later...
Bionote
I am Sam Rapth working as a software architect from India. My Poems & Prose have so far been featured at The Tongue Magazine (UK),The Static Movement Magazine (UK),The Inclement Poetry Magazine (UK),The Taj Mahal Review (India),The Yellow Mama Magazine (US),The International who's who (US),The Recusant Magazine (UK),The Ascent Aspirations Magazine (US) and The Mad Swirl Magazine (US).
1 Poem by Ekerete Umoetok
The Knave
There existed a Knave
That rose from the grave
Those few that were brave
Tried him to save
But made new was a slave
For grave’s knave
He possessed a great need
He always hungered to feed
So he increased his speed
And performed the deed
Many did he bleed
As he planted his seed
When with victims he did deal
He could perennially feel
An overwhelming zeal
After the fate of his meal
He did so cruelly seal
Never again were they real
But clearer was his sight
Superior was his height
Greater was his might
Fiercer was his fight
And further reached his blight
In the depth of the night
In a distant mire
Burning eternally was the fire
From many a funeral pyre
Times were dire
But this was the desire
Of Darkness esquire
That lead Death’s choir
The Demonic Vampire
Bionote
Born in Nigeria and raised in several African countries, Ekerete is an African poet/economist based in Johannesburg.
Having lived and worked in several African countries including Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Zambia and South Africa, Ekerete draws inspiration from his African experiences to write poetry.
He is a published economist in the field of financial economics in emerging markets. Ekerete holds bachelor's degrees in Actuarial Science and Investment Management and a master's degree in Financial Economics.
There existed a Knave
That rose from the grave
Those few that were brave
Tried him to save
But made new was a slave
For grave’s knave
He possessed a great need
He always hungered to feed
So he increased his speed
And performed the deed
Many did he bleed
As he planted his seed
When with victims he did deal
He could perennially feel
An overwhelming zeal
After the fate of his meal
He did so cruelly seal
Never again were they real
But clearer was his sight
Superior was his height
Greater was his might
Fiercer was his fight
And further reached his blight
In the depth of the night
In a distant mire
Burning eternally was the fire
From many a funeral pyre
Times were dire
But this was the desire
Of Darkness esquire
That lead Death’s choir
The Demonic Vampire
Bionote
Born in Nigeria and raised in several African countries, Ekerete is an African poet/economist based in Johannesburg.
Having lived and worked in several African countries including Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Zambia and South Africa, Ekerete draws inspiration from his African experiences to write poetry.
He is a published economist in the field of financial economics in emerging markets. Ekerete holds bachelor's degrees in Actuarial Science and Investment Management and a master's degree in Financial Economics.
3 Poems by A.J. Huffman
I Am Darkness
descending, a veil in shades
of mourning sent to shadow
somber eyes. I am deceptive
depths consuming stars.
I am empty
expanse, a hollow space. The distance
between two points is through
me. I am blind
fear, the frame that holds all things
going bump or shattering in the night.
Beyond the Rainbow
after Somewhere Over the Clouds, artist Osnat Tzadok
there is another world, all white
innocence billowing in fluffy
configurations. It emulates images
of reality, puffed into king-size cotton-
field proportions of improbability.
Metaphors in motion shift
wind and viewing
perspective. Pirate ship drifting into
bountiful fruit basket, shifting into
bud vase, dissipating into lone feather
following line of sun, as everything melts,
becomes one with horizon’s line.
Frozen
One
second
captured in force-
ful breath, winter’s bitter
wind. Natural
tear suspended in un
drop. Diamond-
like, its testimonial reflects
absence, untouched white
expanse, a season’s blight.
Bionote
A.J. Huffman has published seven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the winner of the 2012 Promise of Light Haiku Contest. Her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. www.kindofahurricanepress.com
descending, a veil in shades
of mourning sent to shadow
somber eyes. I am deceptive
depths consuming stars.
I am empty
expanse, a hollow space. The distance
between two points is through
me. I am blind
fear, the frame that holds all things
going bump or shattering in the night.
Beyond the Rainbow
after Somewhere Over the Clouds, artist Osnat Tzadok
there is another world, all white
innocence billowing in fluffy
configurations. It emulates images
of reality, puffed into king-size cotton-
field proportions of improbability.
Metaphors in motion shift
wind and viewing
perspective. Pirate ship drifting into
bountiful fruit basket, shifting into
bud vase, dissipating into lone feather
following line of sun, as everything melts,
becomes one with horizon’s line.
Frozen
One
second
captured in force-
ful breath, winter’s bitter
wind. Natural
tear suspended in un
drop. Diamond-
like, its testimonial reflects
absence, untouched white
expanse, a season’s blight.
Bionote
A.J. Huffman has published seven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the winner of the 2012 Promise of Light Haiku Contest. Her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. www.kindofahurricanepress.com
2 Poems by Richard Provencher
I Was Cast Into The sky
Sundown scans the landscape
brush shimmering
rocky shore a reflection of nature’s gleam
the woods at night
never call it sleeping.
Today’s struggle upstream meant
cut to the edge of shore where sharp
would not slice bare feet --
the wellness of his life
is a smile he had for her
the return one not meant for me
once it was --
coming winter too short
to say goodbye.
Like a Park
Dexter cows are mooing in our
pasture, a herd of
them snacking on hay
sloshing aside the slough
where ducks gobble flotsam and
six llamas raise snouts
admiring their surroundings.
Green grass, September’s scudding sky
branches within reach, poplar
leaves teasing appetites,
blending of animal, earth and sky.
Bionote
Richard is from Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. His enjoyment of the woods combined with contemporary issues form the basis of his writing. Richard is now concentrating on his poetry, which he believes is like a global adventure in a land without borders. His background as a miner, welfare officer, supply teacher, newspaper reporter, and a further 22 years in social services provide him with ample article material.
Richard has work in print and online with literary magazines such as Inscribed, Hudson View, Short Story Library, Ottawa Arts Review, Paragon 111, Tower Poetry, Caduceus, The Danforth Review, Other Voices International, Rubicon Publishing, Writer's Block, The Foliate Oak, Parenting Express, The Penwood Review, and Blue Skies Poetry.
Website: www.wsprog.com/rp/
Sundown scans the landscape
brush shimmering
rocky shore a reflection of nature’s gleam
the woods at night
never call it sleeping.
Today’s struggle upstream meant
cut to the edge of shore where sharp
would not slice bare feet --
the wellness of his life
is a smile he had for her
the return one not meant for me
once it was --
coming winter too short
to say goodbye.
Like a Park
Dexter cows are mooing in our
pasture, a herd of
them snacking on hay
sloshing aside the slough
where ducks gobble flotsam and
six llamas raise snouts
admiring their surroundings.
Green grass, September’s scudding sky
branches within reach, poplar
leaves teasing appetites,
blending of animal, earth and sky.
Bionote
Richard is from Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. His enjoyment of the woods combined with contemporary issues form the basis of his writing. Richard is now concentrating on his poetry, which he believes is like a global adventure in a land without borders. His background as a miner, welfare officer, supply teacher, newspaper reporter, and a further 22 years in social services provide him with ample article material.
Richard has work in print and online with literary magazines such as Inscribed, Hudson View, Short Story Library, Ottawa Arts Review, Paragon 111, Tower Poetry, Caduceus, The Danforth Review, Other Voices International, Rubicon Publishing, Writer's Block, The Foliate Oak, Parenting Express, The Penwood Review, and Blue Skies Poetry.
Website: www.wsprog.com/rp/
1 Poem by Shobhana Kumar
fall
the last straw
almost, always
picks its time to fall:
an innocuous, seemingly ordinary one,
the silent second after
the cacophony,
a cat on the wall moment,
a casual conversation,
sometimes, even tepid lust.
mine picked all.
how many more
will i bear
before i break?
perhaps the straws will tire
and pick another back?
Bionote
Shobhana Kumar’s first volume of poetry, The Voices Never Stop, was published by Writers Workshop, Calcutta in 2012. Her work is featured in The Dance of the Peacock—An Anthology of English Poetry from India edited by Dr. Vivekanand Jha and appears as a chapbook, 'it's winter after spring' by Origami Poems Project. Her work has also appeared in several journals including Journal of the Poetry Society of India, The Brown Critique, The Literary Yard, Writers Asylum, Pyrokinection, Muse India and Kritya Journal of Poetry. She has authored four books of non-fiction. Her short stories are featured in New Asian Writing and will be part of the 2013 anthology. Her second volume of poetry, Conditions Apply will be published by Writers Workshop in 2014.
the last straw
almost, always
picks its time to fall:
an innocuous, seemingly ordinary one,
the silent second after
the cacophony,
a cat on the wall moment,
a casual conversation,
sometimes, even tepid lust.
mine picked all.
how many more
will i bear
before i break?
perhaps the straws will tire
and pick another back?
Bionote
Shobhana Kumar’s first volume of poetry, The Voices Never Stop, was published by Writers Workshop, Calcutta in 2012. Her work is featured in The Dance of the Peacock—An Anthology of English Poetry from India edited by Dr. Vivekanand Jha and appears as a chapbook, 'it's winter after spring' by Origami Poems Project. Her work has also appeared in several journals including Journal of the Poetry Society of India, The Brown Critique, The Literary Yard, Writers Asylum, Pyrokinection, Muse India and Kritya Journal of Poetry. She has authored four books of non-fiction. Her short stories are featured in New Asian Writing and will be part of the 2013 anthology. Her second volume of poetry, Conditions Apply will be published by Writers Workshop in 2014.
5 Photos by Zhijian Tao
Autumn Scenes
Bionote
Zhijian Tao, regular photographic art contributor to Poetry Pacific , and member of the Chinese Writers Association in Quebec, Canada, is a scholar and translator, with a doctorate form McGill University. His published works include Drawing the Dragon: Western European Reinvention of China (monograph), Bibliography Complex (translation from Chinese to English). He has also translated, from Chinese to English, two poetry collections entitled respectively The Fortuities of a Shoe and A Line at Dawn . He has also published prose writings, poems, etc, written in the Chinese language.
1 Poem by Terry Martin
SORROW
Crows at dawn, so you remember, first thing.
Cracks like thunder, storms your sky.
Rattles and snaps venetian blinds.
Hums in the darkened kitchen.
Screeches and howls at 1 a.m.
Stutters, stammers, searching for words.
Like a rubber band on your wrist,
it snaps your heart, leaving
a raised red welt reminder.
Bionote
An avid reader and writer, Terry Martin has published over 350 poems, essays, and articles and has edited both journals and anthologies. Her book, The Secret Language of Women, was published in 2006, and her new collection, The Light You Find, is forthcoming from Blue Begonia Press in 2014. She teaches English at Central Washington University, and was honored as a U.S. Professor of the Year by the CASE/Carnegie Foundation—a national teaching award given to recognize extraordinary commitment and contribution to undergraduate education. She lives with her spouse in Yakima, Washington— The Fruit Bowl of the Nation.
Crows at dawn, so you remember, first thing.
Cracks like thunder, storms your sky.
Rattles and snaps venetian blinds.
Hums in the darkened kitchen.
Screeches and howls at 1 a.m.
Stutters, stammers, searching for words.
Like a rubber band on your wrist,
it snaps your heart, leaving
a raised red welt reminder.
Bionote
An avid reader and writer, Terry Martin has published over 350 poems, essays, and articles and has edited both journals and anthologies. Her book, The Secret Language of Women, was published in 2006, and her new collection, The Light You Find, is forthcoming from Blue Begonia Press in 2014. She teaches English at Central Washington University, and was honored as a U.S. Professor of the Year by the CASE/Carnegie Foundation—a national teaching award given to recognize extraordinary commitment and contribution to undergraduate education. She lives with her spouse in Yakima, Washington— The Fruit Bowl of the Nation.
1 Poem by Ozimede Sunny Ekhalume
HE GRAZING GOAT BY THE GRAVEYARD
So daring!
The grazing goat by the graveyard
He tramples and rolls on heads of Kings
He dines with angels of death
And sleeps with dead men and their secrets
He threads where the bravest of men dread
He eats the heart of the rich for breakfast
And the brain of the scholar for dinner
He dices the kidney of the butcher for snacks
He litters the breasts of the beauty queen with droppings
He urinates on the pubic hair of the prince
He eats off the tongue they used to curse
And the heart they used to conceive evil
Their pain and gain
Their health and wealth
Their poverty and property
Their joy and toil
Are no more of any consequence
He survived their knives
And now he must avenge the blood of his kinsmen
The things we eat will surely eat us
Bionote
Ozimede Sunny Ekhalume is a registered phamacist. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria where he works as a sales and marketing professional. He writes poetry and short stories as a hobby. His first published work is due for release in 2014 by Aalvent Media, Maryland, USA.
So daring!
The grazing goat by the graveyard
He tramples and rolls on heads of Kings
He dines with angels of death
And sleeps with dead men and their secrets
He threads where the bravest of men dread
He eats the heart of the rich for breakfast
And the brain of the scholar for dinner
He dices the kidney of the butcher for snacks
He litters the breasts of the beauty queen with droppings
He urinates on the pubic hair of the prince
He eats off the tongue they used to curse
And the heart they used to conceive evil
Their pain and gain
Their health and wealth
Their poverty and property
Their joy and toil
Are no more of any consequence
He survived their knives
And now he must avenge the blood of his kinsmen
The things we eat will surely eat us
Bionote
Ozimede Sunny Ekhalume is a registered phamacist. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria where he works as a sales and marketing professional. He writes poetry and short stories as a hobby. His first published work is due for release in 2014 by Aalvent Media, Maryland, USA.
2 Poems by Twish Mukherjee
Stellar Pride
I have forgotten the number of lanes
that lead to the pink house;
I had marked the street lamps
with pins on my palm,
but the scars dried too soon
and the last of them vanished last night.
This whole fracas against form and freedom
was actually a race against a decadent cliff
that we used to jump off,
every time we went to the sea.
Every time, the coral reefs pierced our hands and feet
and that beautiful blood
fought for its birth into existence
amidst a Sagittarian travesty.
Cords were on display at the chemists’
and youth was languishing behind the panes.
They always insisted on good manners,
but that was the cleverest trick,
until the archer himself came.
Much mischief had passed
since the disappearance of colors;
much silk had been woven,
much wine had been brewed;
but when the scab-masked marched
on to the small town’s pride,
even icebergs refused to play the shield game.
You can’t read about the rest of the fix,
because ink became too expensive then.
Hereafter
She nailed her mother’s photo
to the freshly painted wall
and waited for the tenant-to-be.
While the clock
made obscene sounds around her neuroglia,
she washed her hands with Dettol.
Bionote
Based in Mumbai, India, Twish Mukherjee is a digital video producer juggling between keyboards and keyholes. He writes poetry when scripts become too suffocating.
I have forgotten the number of lanes
that lead to the pink house;
I had marked the street lamps
with pins on my palm,
but the scars dried too soon
and the last of them vanished last night.
This whole fracas against form and freedom
was actually a race against a decadent cliff
that we used to jump off,
every time we went to the sea.
Every time, the coral reefs pierced our hands and feet
and that beautiful blood
fought for its birth into existence
amidst a Sagittarian travesty.
Cords were on display at the chemists’
and youth was languishing behind the panes.
They always insisted on good manners,
but that was the cleverest trick,
until the archer himself came.
Much mischief had passed
since the disappearance of colors;
much silk had been woven,
much wine had been brewed;
but when the scab-masked marched
on to the small town’s pride,
even icebergs refused to play the shield game.
You can’t read about the rest of the fix,
because ink became too expensive then.
Hereafter
She nailed her mother’s photo
to the freshly painted wall
and waited for the tenant-to-be.
While the clock
made obscene sounds around her neuroglia,
she washed her hands with Dettol.
Bionote
Based in Mumbai, India, Twish Mukherjee is a digital video producer juggling between keyboards and keyholes. He writes poetry when scripts become too suffocating.
2 Poems by Gerard Sarnat
Our Local Star
I wake up each dawn to coyotes yapping at the Hollywood Hills.
Don my coolest Tom Cruise Scientology store kimono once more.
Vow again to set aside millennia of Hebefrantic rituals.
Bowed on one knee, I pray to the orbit that governs our existence.
Instead of recycling Abraham’s many tribes menacing worship,
let’s get back to the Pharaohs’ heliotropic faith, gaze toward RaRa.
When the wife and grandkids are up and fed and dressed and ready to go,
we head to the beach alongside the rest of Greater Los Angeles.
GIFTS FROM A DAUGHTER
i. Friends
Elliot’s almost four. Debra’s nearly three.
Helping Deb get dressed, Ell
said he would protect her from hitting
in pre-school. Swinging together,
so astute, so grounded,
will it only get less as they grow older?
ii. Shoe Leather
Unheralded but feeling pretty good,
I flew out of the strip mall's
Adidas store puffed up in new ones
then crumpled when my hungry wife
shushed me to get off my high horse,
put on an apron, fry some onions
for our lunch. After which I cantered
over to the local grade school
to pick up a bushed grandson. Schlepped back
past storefront windows chocked full of
sneakers, through the strip mall’s dry
cleaning whiffs, into the funk donut shop
for a flurry of turkey and cheese sandwiches
then usual treats,
sugar-crystaled lashes, powdered cheeks,
Adidas sprinkles – Simon’s glazed
so I slipped on his chocked backpack
before we climbed the hill to go home.
Nothing’s so grand for grandparents
and grandkids as grandparents, grandkids.
iii. Fasting
(thanks to LV)
Enlightened as grasshoppers or tadpoles
that sense how much bulk’s just right,
my oldest taught me to hoard
the rest of my energy for myself.
Bionote
Gerard Sarnat has authored three critically acclaimed poetry collections, 2010’s HOMELESS CHRONICLES from Abraham to Burning Man. 2012’s Disputes and 2014’s 17s. Gerry’s published or is forthcoming in over 80 journals and anthologies. Harvard and Stanford educated, Gerard’s a physician who has set up and staffed Palo Alto and San Jose clinics for the disenfranchised, a CEO of health care organizations, and a Stanford professor. For "The Huffington Post" review of his work and more; visit GerardSarnat.com.
I wake up each dawn to coyotes yapping at the Hollywood Hills.
Don my coolest Tom Cruise Scientology store kimono once more.
Vow again to set aside millennia of Hebefrantic rituals.
Bowed on one knee, I pray to the orbit that governs our existence.
Instead of recycling Abraham’s many tribes menacing worship,
let’s get back to the Pharaohs’ heliotropic faith, gaze toward RaRa.
When the wife and grandkids are up and fed and dressed and ready to go,
we head to the beach alongside the rest of Greater Los Angeles.
GIFTS FROM A DAUGHTER
i. Friends
Elliot’s almost four. Debra’s nearly three.
Helping Deb get dressed, Ell
said he would protect her from hitting
in pre-school. Swinging together,
so astute, so grounded,
will it only get less as they grow older?
ii. Shoe Leather
Unheralded but feeling pretty good,
I flew out of the strip mall's
Adidas store puffed up in new ones
then crumpled when my hungry wife
shushed me to get off my high horse,
put on an apron, fry some onions
for our lunch. After which I cantered
over to the local grade school
to pick up a bushed grandson. Schlepped back
past storefront windows chocked full of
sneakers, through the strip mall’s dry
cleaning whiffs, into the funk donut shop
for a flurry of turkey and cheese sandwiches
then usual treats,
sugar-crystaled lashes, powdered cheeks,
Adidas sprinkles – Simon’s glazed
so I slipped on his chocked backpack
before we climbed the hill to go home.
Nothing’s so grand for grandparents
and grandkids as grandparents, grandkids.
iii. Fasting
(thanks to LV)
Enlightened as grasshoppers or tadpoles
that sense how much bulk’s just right,
my oldest taught me to hoard
the rest of my energy for myself.
Bionote
Gerard Sarnat has authored three critically acclaimed poetry collections, 2010’s HOMELESS CHRONICLES from Abraham to Burning Man. 2012’s Disputes and 2014’s 17s. Gerry’s published or is forthcoming in over 80 journals and anthologies. Harvard and Stanford educated, Gerard’s a physician who has set up and staffed Palo Alto and San Jose clinics for the disenfranchised, a CEO of health care organizations, and a Stanford professor. For "The Huffington Post" review of his work and more; visit GerardSarnat.com.
3 Poems by Austin Alexis
In the Hospice Chamber
When we slip into Eternity
we do so alone.
The cosmos does not allow
anyone else to slither through
the same portal, simultaneously.
Three other persons
were stationed in the room
when you took leave of us.
Yet you, most social of beings,
existed there, solitary,
a raindrop
sliding down
a stem
to rest
in earth.
Survivors of an Atrocity
When I think of their pain
I imagine a mist,
the drifting ammonia fumes of Venus’s surface,
an atmosphere unable to settle,
unable to rise.
A purple-putrid fog
dragging itself across shadowed terrains.
The vapor meanders…gains force,
howls--a gale
no one will ever be able to hear.
Many Days
I am living--
the act of breathing, miraculous.
I hear a dog’s bark
echo across back yards.
A siren yells, excited.
Dollar-thin blades of light
seep through vertical blinds.
My tush is cushioned by a mattress.
My tongue tastes good
as it delights my cheeks, my ridged teeth.
A breeze of cooked omelettes
musics the air like harp notes.
I’m aware of all this
and have an appetite for more
as I wonder
when the abundance will end
and will I feel sated.
Bionote
Austin Alexis is the author of Privacy Issues (Lotus Press/Wayne State University Press), which received the 2014 Madgett Poetry Award for a first full-length collection. His work has appeared in Paterson Literary Review, The Ledge, The Journal, Barrow Street, The Pedestal Magazine and other journals. He received residency fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico.
When we slip into Eternity
we do so alone.
The cosmos does not allow
anyone else to slither through
the same portal, simultaneously.
Three other persons
were stationed in the room
when you took leave of us.
Yet you, most social of beings,
existed there, solitary,
a raindrop
sliding down
a stem
to rest
in earth.
Survivors of an Atrocity
When I think of their pain
I imagine a mist,
the drifting ammonia fumes of Venus’s surface,
an atmosphere unable to settle,
unable to rise.
A purple-putrid fog
dragging itself across shadowed terrains.
The vapor meanders…gains force,
howls--a gale
no one will ever be able to hear.
Many Days
I am living--
the act of breathing, miraculous.
I hear a dog’s bark
echo across back yards.
A siren yells, excited.
Dollar-thin blades of light
seep through vertical blinds.
My tush is cushioned by a mattress.
My tongue tastes good
as it delights my cheeks, my ridged teeth.
A breeze of cooked omelettes
musics the air like harp notes.
I’m aware of all this
and have an appetite for more
as I wonder
when the abundance will end
and will I feel sated.
Bionote
Austin Alexis is the author of Privacy Issues (Lotus Press/Wayne State University Press), which received the 2014 Madgett Poetry Award for a first full-length collection. His work has appeared in Paterson Literary Review, The Ledge, The Journal, Barrow Street, The Pedestal Magazine and other journals. He received residency fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico.
2 Poems by James Grabill
No One Lives Alone
Because the past and future leave little room for the present, money can end up spending its people on a few thrills in Monaco. Hypnotized by the roar from the empty stadium, autonomous money in the present can be looking from a car window at medieval man.
But then not many who’ve opened a slow front door could take a next step without carrying along everyone who had a hand in making the door, without walking into the wind with everyone they have known or descended from.
Because ignorance has been so damn hungry for what it doesn’t know, it follows what might pop up, going where anger leads, barking up a nearby tree, fighting a next war as if it were the last.
Lonely and unnatural reasons must exist when possible pasts and futures that envelope the present are mailing it out instantaneously to request donations to preserve waterways or charismatic mammals, to assist the impoverished or underfunded public education, as the present ice face slips faster into the sea.
Origin
Mouse and man share 99% genetic similarity - including the genes to make a tail.
75% of our genetic make-up is the same as a pumpkin - 57% the same as a cabbage.
- The Human Genome
First there was nothing going on for so long it would have been forever. Nothing would have been there. and yet not, not even nothing.
It couldn’t have been the point of universal silence, when the whole audience looks up and sees nothing. It couldn’t have been an era when silence was deafening.
With nothing aglow, not even a vast absence of anything, what followed seems to have been an impossible bone-roaring burst of decimation flushing all chords through sieves at all points beyond semblance, scouring out space for matter.
So there was nothing that could but couldn’t have been, from which ultra-solar irrepressible incinerations many scales of ten brighter than blinding light erupted in a flash splashing through every nuclear pore.
When this slipped into lower gear growling out groans of shrill contrabass it must have been, cataclysmic foundations shattered into raw spectra. Deathly collisions of full-frontal concentrates reacted so hot as to never cool off through orbiting that insinuates and proves it exists.
Nuclear gaseous clouds of nativity soon enough proved more vast than the mind stretches, while spinning unthinkably beyond that.
Left with the question of who anyone thinks we are alongside black ants and the hexagonal fervor of honeybees, the mind achieving autonomy like a fish in water tends to forget its own conditions, the matter with which it interdepends.
The severity and quickness of subsequent birthing appear to have flooded vastness with mirrors that electrically arc between fractal immensity and the largely unnoticed infinitesimal in molecular blazes of common genome.
Bionote
Since the ‘70s, James Grabill’s poems have appeared in periodicals such as Harvard Review, Terrain, Seneca Review, Weber: The Contemporary West, Urthona (UK), Shenandoah, The Oxonian Review (UK), Stand (UK), East West Journal, and The Common Review. His books include An Indigo Scent after the Rain and Poem Rising Out of the Earth. He teaches "systems thinking" relative to sustainability.
Because the past and future leave little room for the present, money can end up spending its people on a few thrills in Monaco. Hypnotized by the roar from the empty stadium, autonomous money in the present can be looking from a car window at medieval man.
But then not many who’ve opened a slow front door could take a next step without carrying along everyone who had a hand in making the door, without walking into the wind with everyone they have known or descended from.
Because ignorance has been so damn hungry for what it doesn’t know, it follows what might pop up, going where anger leads, barking up a nearby tree, fighting a next war as if it were the last.
Lonely and unnatural reasons must exist when possible pasts and futures that envelope the present are mailing it out instantaneously to request donations to preserve waterways or charismatic mammals, to assist the impoverished or underfunded public education, as the present ice face slips faster into the sea.
Origin
Mouse and man share 99% genetic similarity - including the genes to make a tail.
75% of our genetic make-up is the same as a pumpkin - 57% the same as a cabbage.
- The Human Genome
First there was nothing going on for so long it would have been forever. Nothing would have been there. and yet not, not even nothing.
It couldn’t have been the point of universal silence, when the whole audience looks up and sees nothing. It couldn’t have been an era when silence was deafening.
With nothing aglow, not even a vast absence of anything, what followed seems to have been an impossible bone-roaring burst of decimation flushing all chords through sieves at all points beyond semblance, scouring out space for matter.
So there was nothing that could but couldn’t have been, from which ultra-solar irrepressible incinerations many scales of ten brighter than blinding light erupted in a flash splashing through every nuclear pore.
When this slipped into lower gear growling out groans of shrill contrabass it must have been, cataclysmic foundations shattered into raw spectra. Deathly collisions of full-frontal concentrates reacted so hot as to never cool off through orbiting that insinuates and proves it exists.
Nuclear gaseous clouds of nativity soon enough proved more vast than the mind stretches, while spinning unthinkably beyond that.
Left with the question of who anyone thinks we are alongside black ants and the hexagonal fervor of honeybees, the mind achieving autonomy like a fish in water tends to forget its own conditions, the matter with which it interdepends.
The severity and quickness of subsequent birthing appear to have flooded vastness with mirrors that electrically arc between fractal immensity and the largely unnoticed infinitesimal in molecular blazes of common genome.
Bionote
Since the ‘70s, James Grabill’s poems have appeared in periodicals such as Harvard Review, Terrain, Seneca Review, Weber: The Contemporary West, Urthona (UK), Shenandoah, The Oxonian Review (UK), Stand (UK), East West Journal, and The Common Review. His books include An Indigo Scent after the Rain and Poem Rising Out of the Earth. He teaches "systems thinking" relative to sustainability.
2 Poems by John N. Miller
45th HIGH-SCHOOL CLASS REUNION
Behind our name-tags, under
mounded flesh, wrinkles, gray
and thinning hair, we recognize
each other as returning exiles
from our teen-age, high-school past.
Forget the married names, the painfully
long intervening histories
that we’ve incurred—no one wants to hear
more than the readily exchanged few facts
that fix us here, not elsewhere as mere ghosts
evoked by passing memories.
We’re back now, that’s enough—back leafing through
the archives of our minds and hearts,
matching ourselves with memorable dates
and dates we tried but failed to get.
As hoped and fear, I meet my long-term failure,
lovely, fresh, poised as ever, greeting me
as if we were old friends brought back in touch—
words, hands, and lips—after miles and years
of separation.
Do I still have a tight knot in my heart
I wish to loosen?
Some events take half a lifetime
to lose their influence and hurt.
She’s a sixty three year-old
thrice-married grandmother, I learn,
who, smiling, knows
how passé my gallantries are now.
NEAR SEA LEVEL
Fog has rolled in over the beach,
thick, blanketing our sleeping bags
at some unknown hour.
Night,
cold clamminess, invisibility—
still half-asleep, half-freed from time
in everlasting now, we have become
ghosts of ourselves
discarnate
in our numbness to each other’s touch,
our voices stillborn
smothered in the pea soup
with our grey near-presence.
We were alive to one another,
warmed by a campfire, eyes glowing,
faces ruddied by its blaze,
the only light along a far west coastline’s
stretch of vacancy.
Near dusk
we’d pulled off the road to spend the night here
in the open, lulled by the waves’
recurring slosh and slow seethe
of withdrawal on the sand.
(The fog …. The fog.)
Fully awake sometime before dawn
we return to ourselves, bodied
in our shivering.
Zipping open our drenched mummy bags,
groping for contact, love,
pressing
breast to breast to generate heat
through our flesh
we feel
two organs thumping, beating out
against the muffling fog, and hear
a sea lion, unseen, bark nearby
over the recurrent slosh
and seethe of the waves’ withdrawal
back into their source.
Bionote
Though born in Ohio (1933), John N. Miller grew up in Hawai’i (1937-1951), worked under Yvor Winters at Stanford, where he received a Ph.D., and retired in 1997 from teaching literature and writing at Denison University (Granville, OH). He now lives with his wife Ilse in a retirement community in Lexington, VA.
Behind our name-tags, under
mounded flesh, wrinkles, gray
and thinning hair, we recognize
each other as returning exiles
from our teen-age, high-school past.
Forget the married names, the painfully
long intervening histories
that we’ve incurred—no one wants to hear
more than the readily exchanged few facts
that fix us here, not elsewhere as mere ghosts
evoked by passing memories.
We’re back now, that’s enough—back leafing through
the archives of our minds and hearts,
matching ourselves with memorable dates
and dates we tried but failed to get.
As hoped and fear, I meet my long-term failure,
lovely, fresh, poised as ever, greeting me
as if we were old friends brought back in touch—
words, hands, and lips—after miles and years
of separation.
Do I still have a tight knot in my heart
I wish to loosen?
Some events take half a lifetime
to lose their influence and hurt.
She’s a sixty three year-old
thrice-married grandmother, I learn,
who, smiling, knows
how passé my gallantries are now.
NEAR SEA LEVEL
Fog has rolled in over the beach,
thick, blanketing our sleeping bags
at some unknown hour.
Night,
cold clamminess, invisibility—
still half-asleep, half-freed from time
in everlasting now, we have become
ghosts of ourselves
discarnate
in our numbness to each other’s touch,
our voices stillborn
smothered in the pea soup
with our grey near-presence.
We were alive to one another,
warmed by a campfire, eyes glowing,
faces ruddied by its blaze,
the only light along a far west coastline’s
stretch of vacancy.
Near dusk
we’d pulled off the road to spend the night here
in the open, lulled by the waves’
recurring slosh and slow seethe
of withdrawal on the sand.
(The fog …. The fog.)
Fully awake sometime before dawn
we return to ourselves, bodied
in our shivering.
Zipping open our drenched mummy bags,
groping for contact, love,
pressing
breast to breast to generate heat
through our flesh
we feel
two organs thumping, beating out
against the muffling fog, and hear
a sea lion, unseen, bark nearby
over the recurrent slosh
and seethe of the waves’ withdrawal
back into their source.
Bionote
Though born in Ohio (1933), John N. Miller grew up in Hawai’i (1937-1951), worked under Yvor Winters at Stanford, where he received a Ph.D., and retired in 1997 from teaching literature and writing at Denison University (Granville, OH). He now lives with his wife Ilse in a retirement community in Lexington, VA.
3 Poems by Carolyn Mary Kleefeld
The Wilds of Ithaca
(for Patricia)
A wild wind
races across the sea
like a cosmic conductor
orchestrating the tides
to rhapsodic lace.
We gaze in a trance
from our perch
at this tidal fugue
of white manes cresting
while coveys of gulls,
like musical notes,
drift on kelp beds
in the calm beyond.
And the cobalt sea glistens
from its wind-borne sheen
as it sweeps the rolling surf.
I Become A Womb
The dark impregnates dusk
with ancient wisdom.
I become a womb
in which the night may thrive,
impart her secrets,
inseminate with seeds of insight.
Shadows emanating
from the ebony air,
struggle to breathe,
uttering a language
yet to be spoken.
I must become
more silent to hear.
A Gull’s Song
Gazing upon
the lost bay of Atlantis
gilded with mist,
drifting and diaphanous,
I fill with rapture.
Robed in the silhouette
of a weeping darkness,
I bow in homage
to this sacred beauty.
A gold moon rises now
from behind the black mountain,
casting an illumined path
directly to my heart.
And like a gull’s song
sweeping the night,
my spirit soars.
Bionote
Born in England, poet, prose-writer, and visual artist Carolyn Mary Kleefeld grew up in Southern California and studied art and psychology at UCLA. The author of eleven books, she currently resides, studies, writes, and paints in Big Sur, California. Her writing has been translated into Romanian, Korean, Arabic, Bulgarian, and Braille and has been required reading at universities internationally. Carolyn’s art appears worldwide in galleries, museums, and private collections. www.carolynmarykleefeld.com
(for Patricia)
A wild wind
races across the sea
like a cosmic conductor
orchestrating the tides
to rhapsodic lace.
We gaze in a trance
from our perch
at this tidal fugue
of white manes cresting
while coveys of gulls,
like musical notes,
drift on kelp beds
in the calm beyond.
And the cobalt sea glistens
from its wind-borne sheen
as it sweeps the rolling surf.
I Become A Womb
The dark impregnates dusk
with ancient wisdom.
I become a womb
in which the night may thrive,
impart her secrets,
inseminate with seeds of insight.
Shadows emanating
from the ebony air,
struggle to breathe,
uttering a language
yet to be spoken.
I must become
more silent to hear.
A Gull’s Song
Gazing upon
the lost bay of Atlantis
gilded with mist,
drifting and diaphanous,
I fill with rapture.
Robed in the silhouette
of a weeping darkness,
I bow in homage
to this sacred beauty.
A gold moon rises now
from behind the black mountain,
casting an illumined path
directly to my heart.
And like a gull’s song
sweeping the night,
my spirit soars.
Bionote
Born in England, poet, prose-writer, and visual artist Carolyn Mary Kleefeld grew up in Southern California and studied art and psychology at UCLA. The author of eleven books, she currently resides, studies, writes, and paints in Big Sur, California. Her writing has been translated into Romanian, Korean, Arabic, Bulgarian, and Braille and has been required reading at universities internationally. Carolyn’s art appears worldwide in galleries, museums, and private collections. www.carolynmarykleefeld.com
5 Poems by Stephen Page
The Tattler
Your tale is told.
Tell it again
Without your telling
Told again.
After the Rustler and the Horse Thief stopped losing head in lot number eight, clover-fat claves ate hunter free, but horse-shook cows exploded with gas. Your unmean mien and can-do smile electrified paddocks in twos and threes. Summer sun unwatered tanks, and mismanaged grass capitulates capacity. The fence that sent Hobble-Foot on bike, broke this week under hungry cow weight. The chickens that laid lay no more while uncounted lambs grill on Sunday. Your salary arrived late today, so your rubber check melts in your pocket. The rancid Post Maker humbly sat wringing his hat in his lap. Unscented fertilizer that you bagged stacked like shit under the barn. You think inchoately to spread by word something developed sometime before by the Silent Mechanic and the Talkative Salesman drinking mate under the octagon shed.
Casca and the Tattler
I long ago put on my battle gear,
And now it is hard to take it off.
I run across pastures with my sword
Raised, looking for someone to decapitate.
After you tattled the tale of the Horse Thief,
Your saddled numbers did not mesh,
And after we fired the Cattle Rustler
Your calving measures shortened.
Why do you have a premade excuse
For every task incompleted;
Why can’t you finish cutting the lawn,
Nor completely paint the barn;
Why are the pastures not divided,
And the cows passing through canals?
I sliced your tongue off in mid-sentence
And ripped your lips from your cheeks,
And yet you have the tears to rust
The talisman from my armor.
The King and I are a lot like
Macbeth standing over the servants:
“Who do I have to report to now,
When my position is uncertain?”
How do you change from war to life:
Do you just let things go?
Maybe they should stop giving medals:
Look what happened to Douglas MacArthur.
The Tattler’s Reindoctrination
In our hebdomadal meetings I will teach you
How to nail a cadaver to a count post:
Through the eye socket picked clean by vultures;
How to blue-bread mold tuberculars,
And chart them for the Horseback Vet;
How to lift cement blocks with one finger,
Burn urea bags after it rains,
Sell soy seed at a corn bazaar,
Hang hunters by their watch chains.
Everyday I work with you
I find the less you want to learn:
I need to return to my teaching.
You tire me. I wish not to see you;
I wish to call you long distance,
The wires sparkling platinum with current.
Do not touch the wires, learn that they are there,
Learn to walk within electric-fenced lots,
Learn that eucalypti prevent sun stroke.
Lift your scarlet jacket from the barn door;
Do not write “pickup security tour,”
Instead of “Sunday afternoon trip to town.”
The Tattler Thinking
Señor, do you like the things you do?
Do you sleep well at night?
I helped you
put the Horse Thief on foot
cleaning up bat-shit in the barn,
chopping wood.
I even removed his horse from his yard
when he was on vacation
so that when he returned
he would have to walk the 6 kilometers
to the barn
to report for work.
I even told you
he mostly slept all day
when you were not here.
I helped you put the Malinger,
Hobble-Foot,
on foot also
digging up thistle.
I helped you
remove the Cattle Rustler
by telling you where he hid the calves
(his cohort was the neighbor’s foreman).
I went to La Limpieza,
and gave orders to the Bad Guy . . .
boy, that made him angry,
taking order from me.
I have done all this,
and more
and yet you treat me like a dog
(what you do not know
is that I never would have told you anything
had the Bad Guys not given me go-fer jobs
and included me in their gang).
Well, Señor,
I am grateful you have finally
removed the Bad Guys,
but, you should never have taken
away my right to consumption,
(my right to kill a cow for food)—
that you should never have done—
and, you should never have yelled at me
for being an idiot and making me cry
in front of the other guys.
Now Señor,
when you are not on the ranch,
I do exactly what they did,
and to spite you,
I pen your horse
Pac-Man
in a tight corral
without water
or grass.
And, I kill a cow now and then
anyway, for food. It’s so easy to change numbers.
I just act stupid.
Tattler Too,
You have left, the last of the liars and thieves.
I am still here.
My armor is intact.
I had reason to keep it on.
I have learned to lie and I don’t like it.
Policy, politics, public relations,
A smile with a frown concealed,
A handshake with a dagger palmed.
You left like a thief in the night,
A raper, a burglar, a husband with a guilty
Conscious. I did not try to take your pen,
I paid you what you were worth,
I only drove your sister to town
So she could see the sights.
I am missing five cows, a horse,
A standing closet, a truck battery,
A solar panel, a tire jack; accounts.
My promise of a better home for you
Will construct this month, the architects
Are at the gate, their tools in hand,
Their trucks laden with wood beams
And cement, floor tiles, window frames.
I never invaded your home without permission,
Never spoke to your sister behind the barn.
You tipped the scales, opened the gates,
Divided the calves by sex.
Your broken middle finger will never heal
Because your window keeps slamming shut upon it.
Now it is locked. Drive, drive your truck handcuffed
To the wheel, blind yourself with headlights.
Your wife abandoned you when she found out
You took bribes, and that the Whistling Gaucho was fired because he
Visited her in the afternoons while you were
On the other side of the estancia, lining your pockets
With soy seed.
Bionote
Here are poems written while I was ranching and farming during a sabbatical from teaching. I loved learning the cow-to-calf and the seed-to-harvest businesses even though I discovered first-hand that bucolic and pastoral are not synonymous with idyllic. I did however, after a long debate with the owner of the ranch, manage to keep a respectable portion of the land fallow at all times as a moral obligation to the health of the Earth and the people that populate the planet. We had streams, ponds, swamps, wood patches, and wild grass lots all over the place. Flowers of some kind were in bloom year round. Honeybees, hawks, egrets, ibises, owls, parrots, oven birds, mockingbirds, vultures, snakes, worms, crickets, grasshoppers, beetles, teguses (large lizards), armadillos, foxes, possums, skunks, and wildcats all lived in natural (food-chain) harmony near the cattle and sheep (but not often near the chickens). Feral house cats played in the barn under sleeping bats. Boarder Collie mix-breeds ran behind the gauchos on horseback. At one end of the ranch ran a river that flamingoes frequented. All people, places, and events in the poems are, however, fictitious. Website: http://stephenmpage.wordpress.com/
Your tale is told.
Tell it again
Without your telling
Told again.
After the Rustler and the Horse Thief stopped losing head in lot number eight, clover-fat claves ate hunter free, but horse-shook cows exploded with gas. Your unmean mien and can-do smile electrified paddocks in twos and threes. Summer sun unwatered tanks, and mismanaged grass capitulates capacity. The fence that sent Hobble-Foot on bike, broke this week under hungry cow weight. The chickens that laid lay no more while uncounted lambs grill on Sunday. Your salary arrived late today, so your rubber check melts in your pocket. The rancid Post Maker humbly sat wringing his hat in his lap. Unscented fertilizer that you bagged stacked like shit under the barn. You think inchoately to spread by word something developed sometime before by the Silent Mechanic and the Talkative Salesman drinking mate under the octagon shed.
Casca and the Tattler
I long ago put on my battle gear,
And now it is hard to take it off.
I run across pastures with my sword
Raised, looking for someone to decapitate.
After you tattled the tale of the Horse Thief,
Your saddled numbers did not mesh,
And after we fired the Cattle Rustler
Your calving measures shortened.
Why do you have a premade excuse
For every task incompleted;
Why can’t you finish cutting the lawn,
Nor completely paint the barn;
Why are the pastures not divided,
And the cows passing through canals?
I sliced your tongue off in mid-sentence
And ripped your lips from your cheeks,
And yet you have the tears to rust
The talisman from my armor.
The King and I are a lot like
Macbeth standing over the servants:
“Who do I have to report to now,
When my position is uncertain?”
How do you change from war to life:
Do you just let things go?
Maybe they should stop giving medals:
Look what happened to Douglas MacArthur.
The Tattler’s Reindoctrination
In our hebdomadal meetings I will teach you
How to nail a cadaver to a count post:
Through the eye socket picked clean by vultures;
How to blue-bread mold tuberculars,
And chart them for the Horseback Vet;
How to lift cement blocks with one finger,
Burn urea bags after it rains,
Sell soy seed at a corn bazaar,
Hang hunters by their watch chains.
Everyday I work with you
I find the less you want to learn:
I need to return to my teaching.
You tire me. I wish not to see you;
I wish to call you long distance,
The wires sparkling platinum with current.
Do not touch the wires, learn that they are there,
Learn to walk within electric-fenced lots,
Learn that eucalypti prevent sun stroke.
Lift your scarlet jacket from the barn door;
Do not write “pickup security tour,”
Instead of “Sunday afternoon trip to town.”
The Tattler Thinking
Señor, do you like the things you do?
Do you sleep well at night?
I helped you
put the Horse Thief on foot
cleaning up bat-shit in the barn,
chopping wood.
I even removed his horse from his yard
when he was on vacation
so that when he returned
he would have to walk the 6 kilometers
to the barn
to report for work.
I even told you
he mostly slept all day
when you were not here.
I helped you put the Malinger,
Hobble-Foot,
on foot also
digging up thistle.
I helped you
remove the Cattle Rustler
by telling you where he hid the calves
(his cohort was the neighbor’s foreman).
I went to La Limpieza,
and gave orders to the Bad Guy . . .
boy, that made him angry,
taking order from me.
I have done all this,
and more
and yet you treat me like a dog
(what you do not know
is that I never would have told you anything
had the Bad Guys not given me go-fer jobs
and included me in their gang).
Well, Señor,
I am grateful you have finally
removed the Bad Guys,
but, you should never have taken
away my right to consumption,
(my right to kill a cow for food)—
that you should never have done—
and, you should never have yelled at me
for being an idiot and making me cry
in front of the other guys.
Now Señor,
when you are not on the ranch,
I do exactly what they did,
and to spite you,
I pen your horse
Pac-Man
in a tight corral
without water
or grass.
And, I kill a cow now and then
anyway, for food. It’s so easy to change numbers.
I just act stupid.
Tattler Too,
You have left, the last of the liars and thieves.
I am still here.
My armor is intact.
I had reason to keep it on.
I have learned to lie and I don’t like it.
Policy, politics, public relations,
A smile with a frown concealed,
A handshake with a dagger palmed.
You left like a thief in the night,
A raper, a burglar, a husband with a guilty
Conscious. I did not try to take your pen,
I paid you what you were worth,
I only drove your sister to town
So she could see the sights.
I am missing five cows, a horse,
A standing closet, a truck battery,
A solar panel, a tire jack; accounts.
My promise of a better home for you
Will construct this month, the architects
Are at the gate, their tools in hand,
Their trucks laden with wood beams
And cement, floor tiles, window frames.
I never invaded your home without permission,
Never spoke to your sister behind the barn.
You tipped the scales, opened the gates,
Divided the calves by sex.
Your broken middle finger will never heal
Because your window keeps slamming shut upon it.
Now it is locked. Drive, drive your truck handcuffed
To the wheel, blind yourself with headlights.
Your wife abandoned you when she found out
You took bribes, and that the Whistling Gaucho was fired because he
Visited her in the afternoons while you were
On the other side of the estancia, lining your pockets
With soy seed.
Bionote
Here are poems written while I was ranching and farming during a sabbatical from teaching. I loved learning the cow-to-calf and the seed-to-harvest businesses even though I discovered first-hand that bucolic and pastoral are not synonymous with idyllic. I did however, after a long debate with the owner of the ranch, manage to keep a respectable portion of the land fallow at all times as a moral obligation to the health of the Earth and the people that populate the planet. We had streams, ponds, swamps, wood patches, and wild grass lots all over the place. Flowers of some kind were in bloom year round. Honeybees, hawks, egrets, ibises, owls, parrots, oven birds, mockingbirds, vultures, snakes, worms, crickets, grasshoppers, beetles, teguses (large lizards), armadillos, foxes, possums, skunks, and wildcats all lived in natural (food-chain) harmony near the cattle and sheep (but not often near the chickens). Feral house cats played in the barn under sleeping bats. Boarder Collie mix-breeds ran behind the gauchos on horseback. At one end of the ranch ran a river that flamingoes frequented. All people, places, and events in the poems are, however, fictitious. Website: http://stephenmpage.wordpress.com/
1 Poem by Rehan Qayoom
Crusade
Fight for your word and fight for your right
Fight at daytime, fight at night
Fight this battle between darkness and light
Show your courage reveal your might
Fight at midday noon and eve
Plot what your foe cannot conceive
Show this world what you can achieve
Show them the magic of what you believe
Who are they to stop us they cannot decide
What is right or wrong, for god is on our side
God is our master his prophet our guide
We shall build a heaven in which man shall abide
This is the war to put an end to war
Fighting then shall be no more
Back in the arms of the one you adore
Whose pain kept beckoning you back ashore
Bionote
Rehan Qayoom is a poet, editor and translator educated at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has featured in numerous literary publications and performed his work at international venues. He is the author of Prose 1997 - 2008, (2009) and 2 books of poetry After Parveen Shakir, (2011) and About Time, (2011, 2012).
Fight for your word and fight for your right
Fight at daytime, fight at night
Fight this battle between darkness and light
Show your courage reveal your might
Fight at midday noon and eve
Plot what your foe cannot conceive
Show this world what you can achieve
Show them the magic of what you believe
Who are they to stop us they cannot decide
What is right or wrong, for god is on our side
God is our master his prophet our guide
We shall build a heaven in which man shall abide
This is the war to put an end to war
Fighting then shall be no more
Back in the arms of the one you adore
Whose pain kept beckoning you back ashore
Bionote
Rehan Qayoom is a poet, editor and translator educated at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has featured in numerous literary publications and performed his work at international venues. He is the author of Prose 1997 - 2008, (2009) and 2 books of poetry After Parveen Shakir, (2011) and About Time, (2011, 2012).
2 Poems by Juleus Ghunta
Our Own Revolution
“If they don’t allow us to dream, we will not allow them to sleep.”
Popular slogan of the Egyptian Revolution
We dare not devolve our duties
to the dissidents in Tahrir Square.
We note the broken ribs, teargas,
blood curdling in cracks
beneath dark roofs of ashen cities;
hymns that keep dead limbs moving.
We honour Egypt with our own revolution.
Our screams excoriate hands of greed;
skeletons release our sacred dreams.
The Blue Chair
The truth is, there’s no monopoly
on freedom, nor the making of heroes,
nor dreams.
SASO sang songs of liberation
deep into ’76 nights,
causing Apartheid’s wings
to flutter in Soweto streets,
crippled by young dissidents.
I know
that the blue chair
in the final passage
at the western end of the library
where adjacent shelves glow
with the Mandelas, Bikos and Sisulus
shall be your seat of salvation
if you so desire.
Bionote
Juleus Ghunta, who calls himself a Dreamrighter, is the creator of the D.R.E.A.M.R.I.G.H.T acrostic. He was born in Hanover, Jamaica and was educated at the University of the West Indies, Mona, graduating in 2010 with a degree in Media and Communications and History.
In 2013, Juleus received the Prime Minister’s National Youth Award for Excellence for his work as a youth advocate. Juleus’s poems have appeared in Bim (Barbados), and Bookends, the literary supplement of Jamaica’s Sunday Observer. His first collection (The Blue Chair) will be published in 2014 by Hansib Publications.
“If they don’t allow us to dream, we will not allow them to sleep.”
Popular slogan of the Egyptian Revolution
We dare not devolve our duties
to the dissidents in Tahrir Square.
We note the broken ribs, teargas,
blood curdling in cracks
beneath dark roofs of ashen cities;
hymns that keep dead limbs moving.
We honour Egypt with our own revolution.
Our screams excoriate hands of greed;
skeletons release our sacred dreams.
The Blue Chair
The truth is, there’s no monopoly
on freedom, nor the making of heroes,
nor dreams.
SASO sang songs of liberation
deep into ’76 nights,
causing Apartheid’s wings
to flutter in Soweto streets,
crippled by young dissidents.
I know
that the blue chair
in the final passage
at the western end of the library
where adjacent shelves glow
with the Mandelas, Bikos and Sisulus
shall be your seat of salvation
if you so desire.
Bionote
Juleus Ghunta, who calls himself a Dreamrighter, is the creator of the D.R.E.A.M.R.I.G.H.T acrostic. He was born in Hanover, Jamaica and was educated at the University of the West Indies, Mona, graduating in 2010 with a degree in Media and Communications and History.
In 2013, Juleus received the Prime Minister’s National Youth Award for Excellence for his work as a youth advocate. Juleus’s poems have appeared in Bim (Barbados), and Bookends, the literary supplement of Jamaica’s Sunday Observer. His first collection (The Blue Chair) will be published in 2014 by Hansib Publications.
4 Songs by Trevor D. Richardson et al
SONGS OF DYSTOPIA BOY
CORPORATE HUN
by Trevor D. Richardson
Gather ye round, you Corporate Huns,
I’ll show you the death of your future sons…
And as the bodies heap up by the tons
I’ll watch as your wax stone building runs
Down through the street on the people it shuns
And I see America burning like hell-born nuns…
You Marks of the Beast,
You Myth Pilgrim Feast,
A swinging axe should be yours at the least.
Just slam down the blade til your plans have all ceased.
Let me tell you one truth, you’re the Mark of the Beast,
But you think you’re God’s second coming in the East…
Listen in close, Wall Street Conquistadors,
You’re spreading like vapor up through people’s floors,
You’re moving en masse under the cracks of our doors
And grabbing our children to work in your stores,
Feeding the needy to make them your whores
But you need to remember the grave you’re digging is yours.
You Marks of the Beast,
You Myth Peace Talk Feast,
A swinging noose should be yours at the least.
Just slam down the trap door till your kicking has ceased.
Let me tell you the truth,
You’re the Mark of the Beast,
For trying to sell War and own Peace.
So follow me down, you Corporate Huns,
I’ll teach you the fury of my future sons
And as the death sentences heap up by the tons
I’ll watch the sure fate of he who runs
Down through the street past the people he shuns
And I dream of my world turning its back on your guns.
Glad You Smoke
by Jay Calhoun
I felt the Holy Ghost in the back seat of your old Jeep,
and you swore you felt him too.
But these kinds of feelings can be so misleading,
and Jesus put it best when he spread his arms and said,
‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do…’
‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do…’
But before you go you pick up some of my bad habits,
started feeling lonesome and you started smoking
and I’m glad that you did ‘cause I wanna see you die.
Yeah, I’m glad that you did, so can I get you a light?
Did you find yourself hiding in those places undiscovered?
Did you lose yourself when you saw just what you thought you wanted?
Did you find yourself waking in the arms of yet another?
Did you lose yourself when you found out just what they had to offer?
THEY LIVE
by Cody Finkner
What you wanted what you meant to say
Is that you're tired of the complacency and moral decay
I don't know who's got the answers, who calls the shots
but if they catch you digging through the trench you're going to get shot
The needs of the many in the hands of the few
If you want to make a choice you get to choose between two
Working all day to get what you're headed towards
At the end of the day someone else gets the rewards
They live, we sleep, we starve, they eat
You must comply, with their deceit
Don't trust the wolves to guard the sheep
They'll colonize when you close your eyes into a superpower that will
never die
The big fish are bottom feeding and how?
Off the backbreaking workers with the shovels and plows
Illegal labor that built your house and now
You want to build a wall to shut them all out
It's evil, it's vile, it stands in my way
It's the false sense of hope in the American flag
Stay in the pit where you can never be saved
Assimilate to slavery and dig your own grave
From our past we're not learning, our present is no future
PROTEST NATION
by Trevor D. Richardson
I see a blue dolphin drinking blood through her blowhole,
a man with a robot lung shoveling Carolina coal.
His engine chugs, ears shoot a black smoke spurt.
A meteor shower launches outta the Nevada desert.
The Miner serves the Angel of Death for a pension to buy off his fear
while those meteors have screaming faces burning outta the atmosphere.
That’s America, Home of the Working Class Junkie,
Drinking His Constitutional Roofie.
I see a Protest March fighting the Power,
another Protest March fighting for Power.
I see a Protest Rally fighting against everything,
another Rally fighting for everything.
I see Plato saying the want for rights will be our end,
vote a Democratic King to guard us and every knee shall bend.
And I know this ain’t America, it’s the Home of the Working Class Junkie,
Chugging Down his Bipartisan Roofie.
I can see modern Gestapo breaking down doors.
I watch the Big One shaking red white and blue into our floors.
Oil slick oceans cover kids trying to fight the insanity.
Modern Beats and Baby Bohemians sing songs for a peaceful humanity.
Teen dreamers arm themselves with art against doom squads
while their Washington fathers say it’s time to stop sparing their rods.
And I know this is America. Homeland of the Republic Rights Junkies.
And the Corporate Tycoon Groupies.
Protest Nation, Protest Nation, Protest Nation…
Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord,
His feet were bound with shackles when the Apes of Wrath were bored.
We hath prayed and cried for mercy which our countrymen ignored.
This War keeps marching on.
CORPORATE HUN
by Trevor D. Richardson
Gather ye round, you Corporate Huns,
I’ll show you the death of your future sons…
And as the bodies heap up by the tons
I’ll watch as your wax stone building runs
Down through the street on the people it shuns
And I see America burning like hell-born nuns…
You Marks of the Beast,
You Myth Pilgrim Feast,
A swinging axe should be yours at the least.
Just slam down the blade til your plans have all ceased.
Let me tell you one truth, you’re the Mark of the Beast,
But you think you’re God’s second coming in the East…
Listen in close, Wall Street Conquistadors,
You’re spreading like vapor up through people’s floors,
You’re moving en masse under the cracks of our doors
And grabbing our children to work in your stores,
Feeding the needy to make them your whores
But you need to remember the grave you’re digging is yours.
You Marks of the Beast,
You Myth Peace Talk Feast,
A swinging noose should be yours at the least.
Just slam down the trap door till your kicking has ceased.
Let me tell you the truth,
You’re the Mark of the Beast,
For trying to sell War and own Peace.
So follow me down, you Corporate Huns,
I’ll teach you the fury of my future sons
And as the death sentences heap up by the tons
I’ll watch the sure fate of he who runs
Down through the street past the people he shuns
And I dream of my world turning its back on your guns.
Glad You Smoke
by Jay Calhoun
I felt the Holy Ghost in the back seat of your old Jeep,
and you swore you felt him too.
But these kinds of feelings can be so misleading,
and Jesus put it best when he spread his arms and said,
‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do…’
‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do…’
But before you go you pick up some of my bad habits,
started feeling lonesome and you started smoking
and I’m glad that you did ‘cause I wanna see you die.
Yeah, I’m glad that you did, so can I get you a light?
Did you find yourself hiding in those places undiscovered?
Did you lose yourself when you saw just what you thought you wanted?
Did you find yourself waking in the arms of yet another?
Did you lose yourself when you found out just what they had to offer?
THEY LIVE
by Cody Finkner
What you wanted what you meant to say
Is that you're tired of the complacency and moral decay
I don't know who's got the answers, who calls the shots
but if they catch you digging through the trench you're going to get shot
The needs of the many in the hands of the few
If you want to make a choice you get to choose between two
Working all day to get what you're headed towards
At the end of the day someone else gets the rewards
They live, we sleep, we starve, they eat
You must comply, with their deceit
Don't trust the wolves to guard the sheep
They'll colonize when you close your eyes into a superpower that will
never die
The big fish are bottom feeding and how?
Off the backbreaking workers with the shovels and plows
Illegal labor that built your house and now
You want to build a wall to shut them all out
It's evil, it's vile, it stands in my way
It's the false sense of hope in the American flag
Stay in the pit where you can never be saved
Assimilate to slavery and dig your own grave
From our past we're not learning, our present is no future
PROTEST NATION
by Trevor D. Richardson
I see a blue dolphin drinking blood through her blowhole,
a man with a robot lung shoveling Carolina coal.
His engine chugs, ears shoot a black smoke spurt.
A meteor shower launches outta the Nevada desert.
The Miner serves the Angel of Death for a pension to buy off his fear
while those meteors have screaming faces burning outta the atmosphere.
That’s America, Home of the Working Class Junkie,
Drinking His Constitutional Roofie.
I see a Protest March fighting the Power,
another Protest March fighting for Power.
I see a Protest Rally fighting against everything,
another Rally fighting for everything.
I see Plato saying the want for rights will be our end,
vote a Democratic King to guard us and every knee shall bend.
And I know this ain’t America, it’s the Home of the Working Class Junkie,
Chugging Down his Bipartisan Roofie.
I can see modern Gestapo breaking down doors.
I watch the Big One shaking red white and blue into our floors.
Oil slick oceans cover kids trying to fight the insanity.
Modern Beats and Baby Bohemians sing songs for a peaceful humanity.
Teen dreamers arm themselves with art against doom squads
while their Washington fathers say it’s time to stop sparing their rods.
And I know this is America. Homeland of the Republic Rights Junkies.
And the Corporate Tycoon Groupies.
Protest Nation, Protest Nation, Protest Nation…
Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord,
His feet were bound with shackles when the Apes of Wrath were bored.
We hath prayed and cried for mercy which our countrymen ignored.
This War keeps marching on.
5 Poems by Paul Lobo Portugés
married 50 years
he reads
her the NY Times'
obituaries
while she
makes green tea
*****
the ragtag
family sleeps
on subway
grates lulled
by warm
moving trains
*****
why bother
pressing
her home
grown flowers
she never
calls
*****
his father
beat him
black and blue
her husband her
their son
his son
*****
warmed by late
winter’s sun
she waits
for the casino bus
reading a romance
novel
Bionote
Paul Lobo Portugés--reared in Merkel, West Texas, until saved by UCLA, the American Film Institute, and UC Berkeley. Teaches creative writing at UCSB. Taught creative writing at UC Berkeley, USC, SBCC, and the University of Provence. Proud father of two sons. Books include The Visionary Poetics of Allen Ginsberg, Saving Grace, Hands Across the Earth, The Flower Vendor, Paper Song, Aztec Birth, The Body Electric Journal, The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson, Ginsberg: On Tibetan Buddhism, Mantras, and Drugs (Word Palace Press, 2013), Breaking Bread (Finishing Line Press, 2013), and Mao--1,000 Poems for Revolution (forthcoming). Poems are scattered in small magazines across the Americas, Europe, and Asia . Wrote a few films including Jack and Marilyn. Behind the Veil, Shakespeare's Last Bed, Fire From the Mountain, et al. Poetry videos include To My Beloved, Kiss, The Lonely Wind, Lovers, Of Her I Sing, Fathermine, Stones from Heaven, The Killing Fields of Darfur, Who on Earth, et al. Received awards from the National Endowment, the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, The Rockefeller/Bellagio Foundation, et al.
he reads
her the NY Times'
obituaries
while she
makes green tea
*****
the ragtag
family sleeps
on subway
grates lulled
by warm
moving trains
*****
why bother
pressing
her home
grown flowers
she never
calls
*****
his father
beat him
black and blue
her husband her
their son
his son
*****
warmed by late
winter’s sun
she waits
for the casino bus
reading a romance
novel
Bionote
Paul Lobo Portugés--reared in Merkel, West Texas, until saved by UCLA, the American Film Institute, and UC Berkeley. Teaches creative writing at UCSB. Taught creative writing at UC Berkeley, USC, SBCC, and the University of Provence. Proud father of two sons. Books include The Visionary Poetics of Allen Ginsberg, Saving Grace, Hands Across the Earth, The Flower Vendor, Paper Song, Aztec Birth, The Body Electric Journal, The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson, Ginsberg: On Tibetan Buddhism, Mantras, and Drugs (Word Palace Press, 2013), Breaking Bread (Finishing Line Press, 2013), and Mao--1,000 Poems for Revolution (forthcoming). Poems are scattered in small magazines across the Americas, Europe, and Asia . Wrote a few films including Jack and Marilyn. Behind the Veil, Shakespeare's Last Bed, Fire From the Mountain, et al. Poetry videos include To My Beloved, Kiss, The Lonely Wind, Lovers, Of Her I Sing, Fathermine, Stones from Heaven, The Killing Fields of Darfur, Who on Earth, et al. Received awards from the National Endowment, the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, The Rockefeller/Bellagio Foundation, et al.
1 Poem by Martin Willitts, Jr
Air
I could not tell you then, how close you were to death, blue as a stone,
how the chickadees stopped their tormenting love long enough
to feel pity, how the silence sat in a rocking chair, holding the pulse
of a blue vein, looking for some faint sigh of light. I could tell you then,
for I needed you to fight back, my rescue breathing had failed.
I cracked your ribs like walnut shells, forcing space to push out
the nothingness inhabiting you, section by section, occupying
what should be, by rights, yours. I could not tell you over the coldness,
the shifting ice burg in your bones, that I was losing you
and you had to find your own way back, waving frantically,
this way. I could not tell you, because you could not hear,
you were not here, you were headed to the elsewhere.
My training was failing both of us; and you were heading
towards that more insistent calling. All I was holding
was the stone of your life.
They told me I had done everything. I had been at it for hours.
I worked while you were dead. This was no comfort.
I saw you in the blue moon, the unmoving rocking chair,
the air you never had, the coldness of summer at noon,
my bones cracking like ribs, the light on a walnut shell.
I could not tell you then, how close you were to death, blue as a stone,
how the chickadees stopped their tormenting love long enough
to feel pity, how the silence sat in a rocking chair, holding the pulse
of a blue vein, looking for some faint sigh of light. I could tell you then,
for I needed you to fight back, my rescue breathing had failed.
I cracked your ribs like walnut shells, forcing space to push out
the nothingness inhabiting you, section by section, occupying
what should be, by rights, yours. I could not tell you over the coldness,
the shifting ice burg in your bones, that I was losing you
and you had to find your own way back, waving frantically,
this way. I could not tell you, because you could not hear,
you were not here, you were headed to the elsewhere.
My training was failing both of us; and you were heading
towards that more insistent calling. All I was holding
was the stone of your life.
They told me I had done everything. I had been at it for hours.
I worked while you were dead. This was no comfort.
I saw you in the blue moon, the unmoving rocking chair,
the air you never had, the coldness of summer at noon,
my bones cracking like ribs, the light on a walnut shell.
Bionote
Martin Willitts Jr was nominated for 8 Pushcart and 7 Best of the Net awards. He is the winner of the 2014 Broadsided award; and winner of the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest. His current collections include national chapbook contest winner, "William Blake, Not Blessed Angel But Restless Man" (Red Ocher Press, 2014), ), national full length contest winner “ Searching for What You Cannot See ” (Hiraeth Press, 2013), and “ Before Anything, There Was Mystery ” (Flutter Press, 2014).
Martin Willitts Jr was nominated for 8 Pushcart and 7 Best of the Net awards. He is the winner of the 2014 Broadsided award; and winner of the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest. His current collections include national chapbook contest winner, "William Blake, Not Blessed Angel But Restless Man" (Red Ocher Press, 2014), ), national full length contest winner “ Searching for What You Cannot See ” (Hiraeth Press, 2013), and “ Before Anything, There Was Mystery ” (Flutter Press, 2014).
1 Poem by M.J.Iuppa
Early Winter Sermon
Too close to the road, old pines stand
tuned to the environment. Heavy branches
lift in the rush of arctic air, sending
clumps of snow to mark a trail leading
to nowhere but here, where we can
stay straight as needles, with our
arms outstretched, casting shadows
on the listening hour, beckoning
the ghost of Blake to make us
realize heaven isn’t found in restless
dreams, but heard in quiet thoughts
of winding winter streams.
Bionote
M.J.Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Between Worlds is her most recent chapbook, featuring lyric essays, flash fiction and prose poems (Foothills Publishing, 2013). Recent poems, flash fictions, and essays in When Women Waken, Poppy Road Review, Wild: A Quarterly, Eunoia Review, Andrea Reads America, Canto, Grey Sparrow Journal, The Poetry Storehouse, Avocet, Right Hand Pointing, Tiny-lights, The Lake (U.K.), The Kentucky Review, and more. She is the Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program at St. John Fisher College. You can follow her musings on writing and creative sustainability on Red Rooster Farm on mjiuppa.blogspot.com.
Too close to the road, old pines stand
tuned to the environment. Heavy branches
lift in the rush of arctic air, sending
clumps of snow to mark a trail leading
to nowhere but here, where we can
stay straight as needles, with our
arms outstretched, casting shadows
on the listening hour, beckoning
the ghost of Blake to make us
realize heaven isn’t found in restless
dreams, but heard in quiet thoughts
of winding winter streams.
Bionote
M.J.Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Between Worlds is her most recent chapbook, featuring lyric essays, flash fiction and prose poems (Foothills Publishing, 2013). Recent poems, flash fictions, and essays in When Women Waken, Poppy Road Review, Wild: A Quarterly, Eunoia Review, Andrea Reads America, Canto, Grey Sparrow Journal, The Poetry Storehouse, Avocet, Right Hand Pointing, Tiny-lights, The Lake (U.K.), The Kentucky Review, and more. She is the Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program at St. John Fisher College. You can follow her musings on writing and creative sustainability on Red Rooster Farm on mjiuppa.blogspot.com.
3 Poems by B.Z. Niditch
TEN P.M.
Into the lamplight
with two Hemingways,
a novel and my cat
who both fall
like almonds
under the card table
of solitaire.
WITH SO MUCH TO SAY
Asking to have a day
disconsolate, open
not now hidden
behind sunglasses
or a masquerade
of masks,
when time and word
are in sink with another,
carrying my cargo
of language to reach
through cities and hamlets
with an instilled vision
reaching my urban readings
now at transparent peace
without a murmur
or a tweet
of annihilated opinions,
expecting to share my space
of transposed verse
as when clouds unlock
the sky's intimacy into sunshine
for my unmeasured voice.
INTO THE STILLNESS
Into the stillness
when a moment
packs the heat
of your consciousness
and a poem overflows
from my everyday eyes
here on a boulevard bench
by the lure of the sea
forgetting the quiet insight
of a last night insomniac
with a hypnosis of language
lost in shadowy breath
with the countless hours
of a proverbial sleep walker.
Into the lamplight
with two Hemingways,
a novel and my cat
who both fall
like almonds
under the card table
of solitaire.
WITH SO MUCH TO SAY
Asking to have a day
disconsolate, open
not now hidden
behind sunglasses
or a masquerade
of masks,
when time and word
are in sink with another,
carrying my cargo
of language to reach
through cities and hamlets
with an instilled vision
reaching my urban readings
now at transparent peace
without a murmur
or a tweet
of annihilated opinions,
expecting to share my space
of transposed verse
as when clouds unlock
the sky's intimacy into sunshine
for my unmeasured voice.
INTO THE STILLNESS
Into the stillness
when a moment
packs the heat
of your consciousness
and a poem overflows
from my everyday eyes
here on a boulevard bench
by the lure of the sea
forgetting the quiet insight
of a last night insomniac
with a hypnosis of language
lost in shadowy breath
with the countless hours
of a proverbial sleep walker.
3 Poems by H C Lee (Peter)
Traveller’s diary
(On Zhang Daqian’s Achensee Lake, 1968)
The grave foliage in the neighbourhood
of such forlorn valley grows as the cold
black ink branches out on the absorbent silk:
The darkened veins of a breathless body.
Moist in the air bridges the jade-green
storm discharged from the massive
blue in heaven. The attack is almost
noiseless. You face the saturated gust
brushing against the patient loch.
Waves wrinkle lands into part of the
accidental clutter. The straying foam
oozes contagiously as an intrusive decision.
Landscape mystified, veiled by a
depression of melted hues, filtering
away an ancient morning. You ponder.
The intact cottages amidst the sapphire
flame burning mountaintops into crystal
reflections become asylums to your
travelling mind. Light rain awaits.
vi VA
(Please come in)
It’s as if a doctor was about
to sentence you to whatsoever.
Explaining an album was infallibly
personal, too personal.
The bloodless cold vigilant eyeball motionless,
bridging the pre-morphed to Auckland
where the Dr sneered at the caterpillar
trying to wrap itself with words it mouthed.
My room was parasitized by larvae
from which the brown dancers hatched
to seek the accidental moons. Every night
the music ceased as
the performer struck. Busted.
You simply don’t possess the emperor’s
eyes nor the devil’s head.
What soul are you carrying anyway?
(What soul are you carrying?)
I filled the empty slots of the album
and found myself blinded
by my own silk. The dialogues —
merely more than choked whispers.
I wrapped a moth last night
and sent it back in the most valueless
tissue paper.
And where is it now?
Near
Not the destination that causes
the heartbeat.
I still exist the parallel time
a new morning, with a different me yet
the distance,
the distance outgrows the hours.
I browser up the possibilities and
accelerate them with poison. It dies
into a chair and a desk.
Inhaling has become a means of decomposing
the in-betweens.
Out of reach as I touch it.
Bionote
Ho Cheung LEE (Peter), EdD, resides in Hong Kong where he teaches and writes. He earned his doctorate from The University of Hong Kong with a thesis on teaching reading. He was a winner in the Miracle Poetry Competition 2014. His poems have appeared in journals such as aaduna, Chaffey Review, FIVE Poetry Magazine, Red Booth Review, and The Interpreter’s House. His short stories have also been published in Eastlit, Miracle Magazine and Oddville Press. He could be contacted at http://ho-cheung.weebly.com .
(On Zhang Daqian’s Achensee Lake, 1968)
The grave foliage in the neighbourhood
of such forlorn valley grows as the cold
black ink branches out on the absorbent silk:
The darkened veins of a breathless body.
Moist in the air bridges the jade-green
storm discharged from the massive
blue in heaven. The attack is almost
noiseless. You face the saturated gust
brushing against the patient loch.
Waves wrinkle lands into part of the
accidental clutter. The straying foam
oozes contagiously as an intrusive decision.
Landscape mystified, veiled by a
depression of melted hues, filtering
away an ancient morning. You ponder.
The intact cottages amidst the sapphire
flame burning mountaintops into crystal
reflections become asylums to your
travelling mind. Light rain awaits.
vi VA
(Please come in)
It’s as if a doctor was about
to sentence you to whatsoever.
Explaining an album was infallibly
personal, too personal.
The bloodless cold vigilant eyeball motionless,
bridging the pre-morphed to Auckland
where the Dr sneered at the caterpillar
trying to wrap itself with words it mouthed.
My room was parasitized by larvae
from which the brown dancers hatched
to seek the accidental moons. Every night
the music ceased as
the performer struck. Busted.
You simply don’t possess the emperor’s
eyes nor the devil’s head.
What soul are you carrying anyway?
(What soul are you carrying?)
I filled the empty slots of the album
and found myself blinded
by my own silk. The dialogues —
merely more than choked whispers.
I wrapped a moth last night
and sent it back in the most valueless
tissue paper.
And where is it now?
Near
Not the destination that causes
the heartbeat.
I still exist the parallel time
a new morning, with a different me yet
the distance,
the distance outgrows the hours.
I browser up the possibilities and
accelerate them with poison. It dies
into a chair and a desk.
Inhaling has become a means of decomposing
the in-betweens.
Out of reach as I touch it.
Bionote
Ho Cheung LEE (Peter), EdD, resides in Hong Kong where he teaches and writes. He earned his doctorate from The University of Hong Kong with a thesis on teaching reading. He was a winner in the Miracle Poetry Competition 2014. His poems have appeared in journals such as aaduna, Chaffey Review, FIVE Poetry Magazine, Red Booth Review, and The Interpreter’s House. His short stories have also been published in Eastlit, Miracle Magazine and Oddville Press. He could be contacted at http://ho-cheung.weebly.com .
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