After the fourth beast sang
First we ate our dogs because they understood
devotion
and then we ate our horses because
the buffalo
were gone
and then we ate grass
because the land was ours
An Apology
Windigo lived in a stone house
and dreamed of eating Indians
the feet tasted best
and then apologized to the Indians
hidden in his icy heart
Residential School Orphans
When the girls be came pregnant
the priests made the boys
dig the graves
in the darkness
They dug
placed the babies inside
the earth
The graves left
unbaptized
unmarked
Thursday, 5 November 2015
1 Poem by Wendy Gist
Passion Fog
Disintegrate external talk
into tactile trance.
No need to say
anything anymore.
Misty pull: adored gent’s
playful sentiment, analgesic.
He piques her:
amatory animal gaze, soft
smile, with a carnal ‘umm’
at the back of tongue.
Way too damn fine,
he throbs in a nebulous haze.
She craves his breath
at jugular, ear,
but capture it not
upon the teary December fog.
She can’t tell, up till now,
if he strives to bite
or kiss tender.
Bionote
Wendy Gist has had her poetry and fiction featured or forthcoming in Amsterdam Quarterly, Glint Literary Journal, Gravel, Grey Sparrow Journal, Juked, New Plains Review, Oyez Review, Poetry Pacific, Soundings Review, The Fourth River, Toad Suck Review and many other fine journals. A native Arizonan, she now lives in New Mexico, where she serves as managing editor of the Red Savina Review.
Disintegrate external talk
into tactile trance.
No need to say
anything anymore.
Misty pull: adored gent’s
playful sentiment, analgesic.
He piques her:
amatory animal gaze, soft
smile, with a carnal ‘umm’
at the back of tongue.
Way too damn fine,
he throbs in a nebulous haze.
She craves his breath
at jugular, ear,
but capture it not
upon the teary December fog.
She can’t tell, up till now,
if he strives to bite
or kiss tender.
Bionote
Wendy Gist has had her poetry and fiction featured or forthcoming in Amsterdam Quarterly, Glint Literary Journal, Gravel, Grey Sparrow Journal, Juked, New Plains Review, Oyez Review, Poetry Pacific, Soundings Review, The Fourth River, Toad Suck Review and many other fine journals. A native Arizonan, she now lives in New Mexico, where she serves as managing editor of the Red Savina Review.
3 Poems by Stefanie Bennett
WILLOW DREAMING
Drought’s my season; red earth
The soliloquy. Even
This creek-bed’s cut its losses.
Moribund crab-apple, you recognize
My skull – your old playmate -
Gone dissonant with haze.
Churlishly, I once believed
I could douse fire up
And fan it back again
But – I am no overlord. The odd
Monsoon puts quiet to that.
Born victims, let’s not forget
Our origins. Too adroitly fate’s
Equated to obstinacy;
Deliverance grounded on hearsay.
Still, the moon’s stark full of mystery
And land’s aging evermore.
I salute us with dust, with passion
- Watch the miraging rivers run.
SCORE
This motel. Room service.
She is no more than
Sixteen; has freckles,
And tells
Back at the farm
It’d be near-on milking time.
Back at the farm
The cock’d be
Winding down,
The sky alive,
The sun lengthening.
‘Your family?’ I ask.
Dead, she says...
OPENING THE COFFERS
Trying to walk it off
- The chaos
Of an un-natural
Human world,
The mind’s footprint
Wanders further
Than any
Straight or narrow
Nemesis –.
I felt the early
Lick
Of the sun –.
Saw
The slow sidelong
Passing
Of a wolf
With
The moon
In his teeth.
Bionote
Stefanie Bennett has published many books of poetry, a libretto, and a novel. Over 40 plus years she has acted as a publishing editor, tutored in The Institute of Modern Languages at James Cook University and worked with Arts Action for Peace. Of mixed ancestry [Italian/Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee], she was born in Townsville, Queensland, Australia, May 6, 1945.
Drought’s my season; red earth
The soliloquy. Even
This creek-bed’s cut its losses.
Moribund crab-apple, you recognize
My skull – your old playmate -
Gone dissonant with haze.
Churlishly, I once believed
I could douse fire up
And fan it back again
But – I am no overlord. The odd
Monsoon puts quiet to that.
Born victims, let’s not forget
Our origins. Too adroitly fate’s
Equated to obstinacy;
Deliverance grounded on hearsay.
Still, the moon’s stark full of mystery
And land’s aging evermore.
I salute us with dust, with passion
- Watch the miraging rivers run.
SCORE
This motel. Room service.
She is no more than
Sixteen; has freckles,
And tells
Back at the farm
It’d be near-on milking time.
Back at the farm
The cock’d be
Winding down,
The sky alive,
The sun lengthening.
‘Your family?’ I ask.
Dead, she says...
OPENING THE COFFERS
Trying to walk it off
- The chaos
Of an un-natural
Human world,
The mind’s footprint
Wanders further
Than any
Straight or narrow
Nemesis –.
I felt the early
Lick
Of the sun –.
Saw
The slow sidelong
Passing
Of a wolf
With
The moon
In his teeth.
Bionote
Stefanie Bennett has published many books of poetry, a libretto, and a novel. Over 40 plus years she has acted as a publishing editor, tutored in The Institute of Modern Languages at James Cook University and worked with Arts Action for Peace. Of mixed ancestry [Italian/Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee], she was born in Townsville, Queensland, Australia, May 6, 1945.
5 Poems by Bob Brill
To Benton at Age 5 Months
I envy you babies who bathe all day
in the shimmering golden light
that streams through the nursery windows.
You have yet to learn the ropes
that tie us in knots
and choke off access
to the infinite bounty
of the suck-titty world.
Writer's Block
I stagger across
that thirsty desert
with eyes bulging
for a glimpse of an oasis
where words flow in generous
never depleted fountains
and beautiful maidens
serve overflowing cups of metaphors
that spill on the ground of my desire
to spawn a prolific flowering
of words that sprout wings
and fly off in all directions.
Till then I wander the desert
that so resembles
a blank sheet of paper.
Not Now
I embrace her
to offer support
in her time of grief.
The warmth of her body
heats the desire
I didn't know I had.
I press her close,
she kisses my cheek
as tears stream from her eyes.
This is not the time,
not the place,
maybe not even a good idea.
We separate,
but a signal has been passed
that will be processed at a later time.
One Two
I celebrate
the oneness of two,
my wife and I
forty years together,
still in love.
I celebrate
the twoness of one,
as my eyes caress
attractive women passing
on the street.
Have I ever acted
on that desire?
Yes, I have,
more than once,
more than twice.
And so has she,
not just one or two times,
but as I said above,
still together,
still in love.
How the Bees Do It
The drone bee has forty thousand eyes.
He grows fat on sweet syrups
and gathers none.
He gorges with his brethren in the palace.
On the day of the nuptial flight
all forty thousand eyes
and the single phallus
are bent on royal copulation.
On this same day
the one winner
and the many losers
are massacred by the honey gatherers.
Bionote
Bob Brill is a retired computer programmer and digital artist. He is now devoting his energies to writing fiction and poetry. His novellas, short stories and 140 poems have appeared in over forty online magazines, print journals, and anthologies.
I envy you babies who bathe all day
in the shimmering golden light
that streams through the nursery windows.
You have yet to learn the ropes
that tie us in knots
and choke off access
to the infinite bounty
of the suck-titty world.
Writer's Block
I stagger across
that thirsty desert
with eyes bulging
for a glimpse of an oasis
where words flow in generous
never depleted fountains
and beautiful maidens
serve overflowing cups of metaphors
that spill on the ground of my desire
to spawn a prolific flowering
of words that sprout wings
and fly off in all directions.
Till then I wander the desert
that so resembles
a blank sheet of paper.
Not Now
I embrace her
to offer support
in her time of grief.
The warmth of her body
heats the desire
I didn't know I had.
I press her close,
she kisses my cheek
as tears stream from her eyes.
This is not the time,
not the place,
maybe not even a good idea.
We separate,
but a signal has been passed
that will be processed at a later time.
One Two
I celebrate
the oneness of two,
my wife and I
forty years together,
still in love.
I celebrate
the twoness of one,
as my eyes caress
attractive women passing
on the street.
Have I ever acted
on that desire?
Yes, I have,
more than once,
more than twice.
And so has she,
not just one or two times,
but as I said above,
still together,
still in love.
How the Bees Do It
The drone bee has forty thousand eyes.
He grows fat on sweet syrups
and gathers none.
He gorges with his brethren in the palace.
On the day of the nuptial flight
all forty thousand eyes
and the single phallus
are bent on royal copulation.
On this same day
the one winner
and the many losers
are massacred by the honey gatherers.
Bionote
Bob Brill is a retired computer programmer and digital artist. He is now devoting his energies to writing fiction and poetry. His novellas, short stories and 140 poems have appeared in over forty online magazines, print journals, and anthologies.
5 Poems by Frank Joussen
The Best of Both Worlds
Stuff yourself with fast food
and lower your cholesterol.
Take pills and don´t
become addicted.
Live in the sun
and don´t die of skin cancer.
Starbucks your stomach
but don´t upset it.
We live in the age of
“All You Can Eat
Without Getting Fat” ads –
“You can keep your health
and enjoy the dolce vita” promises.
You give your last penny
to the multinationals that wolf
down the world while looking humane.
How about eating bio and buying Transfair?
The lives you save might be
your own, plus a couple of others,
not forgetting this nice planet.
Tell Yourself a Story
tell yourself a story
while you´re walking
down the street,
say to yourself: this is
not a slum in Madras
nor a favella
in Sao Paulo
this is not a street at all
but a non-existent road
which you´re turning into
an existing one
till the snow covers
your footprints again
and you struggle to return,
all the way down
from the top,
because
these are the mountains
so this may be Chile,
or Kenya or Tibet,
it doesn´t matter
all that much
tell your yourself:
this is not a busy street
filled with too many people
each indifferent, at best,
to the crippled leg
or the military boot
next to them
this is solitude, not loneliness
and when you reach
the half frozen man,
wounded yet numb,
you might as well
kill him, take his things
and run
but you couldn´t
and you wouldn´t,
after fighting the bloodlust
of the beast for so long
finally let the images blend:
the old friend in the snow
melts into the unknown beggar
in the blazing city dirt
and vice versa –
their very sick or dying
eyes shooting sparks
of recognition.
Air-Raided Night
I am night –
giver of peace and quiet
but I am not
myself tonight.
My head aches – crisscrossed
by mutated mosquitoes
that send lightning
through my veins
which tears up my belly
and wakes up the children
pursuing their dreams
of happiness there.
My ears hurt – pierced by noise
to mock my tranquillity
with explosions
that turn my darkened homes
into illuminated graves.
My feet are shaken
by man-made earthquakes.
They´re raiding – robbing me
of everything that I am
till I go to pieces which
fall
down to reveal
the debris
that the world
and I
have become.
Poverty Poem
It looks like the idyll from the Kipling story.
There are the huts, the dusty field paths,
peopled with sari girls
carrying milk, water, firewood,
the cooking women and the chatting men.
And at night the beast roams freely,
restlessly circling the sleeping village.
But the beast is inside, not outside,
roaring in the tummy of a sleepless boy,
poaching in the nether worlds
of unemployed men´s overactive minds.
Never falling prey to
the ingenuity of the hapless cooks
in front of their cold pans and empty pots.
Too clever, too streetwise to
ever be slain or expelled.
Only a girl with pen and writing pad
fresh from school stands the chance of catching it.
If you don´t send her away after college
to the Bombays and Bangalores,
the million cities India has become,
where she´ll forget these vivid images
and reproduce for the global village
the idyll from the Kipling story.
The Tingzijian Connection
On the stairway of one
of the last shikumen in Shanghai
I finally find the tingzijian,
by no means reserved for
but due to poverty often inhabited by
the former intellectuals of this city.
Why were the tingzijians praised,
even romanticized in Chinese literature?
They were not only tiny, cold and cheap,
they were halfway between two storeys,
enabling the writers to absorb the emotions
trickling down the stairs
like water through the ceiling
or letting them catch the rumours
rising up like steam from the common kitchen.
They were their windows from a different angle,
their ears for everyone´s coming and going
- and they set those intellectuals
right in the middle of the people
to whom we normally don´t belong.
Bionote
Frank Joussen is a German teacher. He writes mostly in English and has published/co-edited four books, "Building Bridges", "Anthologies I (I.D.E.A.S., India), "The Faces of Love/Shades of Love", love poems, together with Romanian poet Ana Cicio, and "Family Matters" (an international anthology of family poems and prose pieces, Nivasini, India). His poems and short stories have been published in many literary journals and anthologies worldwide. He is the member of Pax Christi, an international Catholic peace organization, and of a one-world group.
Stuff yourself with fast food
and lower your cholesterol.
Take pills and don´t
become addicted.
Live in the sun
and don´t die of skin cancer.
Starbucks your stomach
but don´t upset it.
We live in the age of
“All You Can Eat
Without Getting Fat” ads –
“You can keep your health
and enjoy the dolce vita” promises.
You give your last penny
to the multinationals that wolf
down the world while looking humane.
How about eating bio and buying Transfair?
The lives you save might be
your own, plus a couple of others,
not forgetting this nice planet.
Tell Yourself a Story
tell yourself a story
while you´re walking
down the street,
say to yourself: this is
not a slum in Madras
nor a favella
in Sao Paulo
this is not a street at all
but a non-existent road
which you´re turning into
an existing one
till the snow covers
your footprints again
and you struggle to return,
all the way down
from the top,
because
these are the mountains
so this may be Chile,
or Kenya or Tibet,
it doesn´t matter
all that much
tell your yourself:
this is not a busy street
filled with too many people
each indifferent, at best,
to the crippled leg
or the military boot
next to them
this is solitude, not loneliness
and when you reach
the half frozen man,
wounded yet numb,
you might as well
kill him, take his things
and run
but you couldn´t
and you wouldn´t,
after fighting the bloodlust
of the beast for so long
finally let the images blend:
the old friend in the snow
melts into the unknown beggar
in the blazing city dirt
and vice versa –
their very sick or dying
eyes shooting sparks
of recognition.
Air-Raided Night
I am night –
giver of peace and quiet
but I am not
myself tonight.
My head aches – crisscrossed
by mutated mosquitoes
that send lightning
through my veins
which tears up my belly
and wakes up the children
pursuing their dreams
of happiness there.
My ears hurt – pierced by noise
to mock my tranquillity
with explosions
that turn my darkened homes
into illuminated graves.
My feet are shaken
by man-made earthquakes.
They´re raiding – robbing me
of everything that I am
till I go to pieces which
fall
down to reveal
the debris
that the world
and I
have become.
Poverty Poem
It looks like the idyll from the Kipling story.
There are the huts, the dusty field paths,
peopled with sari girls
carrying milk, water, firewood,
the cooking women and the chatting men.
And at night the beast roams freely,
restlessly circling the sleeping village.
But the beast is inside, not outside,
roaring in the tummy of a sleepless boy,
poaching in the nether worlds
of unemployed men´s overactive minds.
Never falling prey to
the ingenuity of the hapless cooks
in front of their cold pans and empty pots.
Too clever, too streetwise to
ever be slain or expelled.
Only a girl with pen and writing pad
fresh from school stands the chance of catching it.
If you don´t send her away after college
to the Bombays and Bangalores,
the million cities India has become,
where she´ll forget these vivid images
and reproduce for the global village
the idyll from the Kipling story.
The Tingzijian Connection
On the stairway of one
of the last shikumen in Shanghai
I finally find the tingzijian,
by no means reserved for
but due to poverty often inhabited by
the former intellectuals of this city.
Why were the tingzijians praised,
even romanticized in Chinese literature?
They were not only tiny, cold and cheap,
they were halfway between two storeys,
enabling the writers to absorb the emotions
trickling down the stairs
like water through the ceiling
or letting them catch the rumours
rising up like steam from the common kitchen.
They were their windows from a different angle,
their ears for everyone´s coming and going
- and they set those intellectuals
right in the middle of the people
to whom we normally don´t belong.
Bionote
Frank Joussen is a German teacher. He writes mostly in English and has published/co-edited four books, "Building Bridges", "Anthologies I (I.D.E.A.S., India), "The Faces of Love/Shades of Love", love poems, together with Romanian poet Ana Cicio, and "Family Matters" (an international anthology of family poems and prose pieces, Nivasini, India). His poems and short stories have been published in many literary journals and anthologies worldwide. He is the member of Pax Christi, an international Catholic peace organization, and of a one-world group.
1 Poem by Bruce Louis Dodson
BUSHIDO STEEL
Only the winter wind surrounds me
Soldiers do not come to look for death
inside this cave
My sword's calligraphy is perfect
brush of steel
Red ink on white snow.
Published: Pirene's Fountain 2014
Bionote
Bruce Louis Dodson is an American expat living in Borlänge, Sweden, where he practices photography and writes fiction and poetry. Some of his most recent work has appeared in: Breadline Press West Coast Poetry Anthology, Foreign & Far Away – Writers Abroad Anthology, Sleeping Cat Books – Trip of a Lifetime Anthology, The Crucible, Blue Collar Review, Barely South Review, 3rd Wednesday, The Path, Northern Liberties Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Sounds of Solace – Meditative Verse Anthology, Tic Toc Anthology, High Coupe, Vine Leaves, and Cordite Poetry Review.
Only the winter wind surrounds me
Soldiers do not come to look for death
inside this cave
My sword's calligraphy is perfect
brush of steel
Red ink on white snow.
Published: Pirene's Fountain 2014
Bionote
Bruce Louis Dodson is an American expat living in Borlänge, Sweden, where he practices photography and writes fiction and poetry. Some of his most recent work has appeared in: Breadline Press West Coast Poetry Anthology, Foreign & Far Away – Writers Abroad Anthology, Sleeping Cat Books – Trip of a Lifetime Anthology, The Crucible, Blue Collar Review, Barely South Review, 3rd Wednesday, The Path, Northern Liberties Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Sounds of Solace – Meditative Verse Anthology, Tic Toc Anthology, High Coupe, Vine Leaves, and Cordite Poetry Review.
5 Poems by Kapardeli Eftichia
YELLOW FLOWERS
Pain lot
Oh! cool night
divided the lives of people
in both the Sun and the Rain
***
The moans of flowers
wounded in that
the slope with
white trail
poured in Heaven
***
Flowers, the air of God
hug widen
eternal silence
sweet kissed
***
And this flower
define your will,
Your heart your thought into
a turbine which widens
in a circle ever
not Dying
***
In a yellow flower
pollen of love
forgotten
the name you chose
Oh! my heart
First blossom
Low clouds
resting on the window
and weeping incessantly
You left without a word all alone
the night flowers eyelids
midnight opening
White lilies
flourished under a
handful of sky
First blossoms you
the communion of Heaven
***
The safeguard your lips judder
in this long journey
got the body of hesitation
and leaned to sleep
the soil to the sweet
rain after wrist
***
Correct me love
veins dream
the first dawn, anthochyto
smiley through color
night and motionless
silence you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
***
Friends grow away from us
Half the road of dawn
White thoughts on caches
of mind
a celestial ceremony
AN AUTUMN
The seed of silence
unites Heaven
the earth
Autumn and lost
in that veil
rain constellations
***
On wet rocks
naked truth
silent, timeless, eternal
fear, sadness, guilt
leaves
***
In the shadow of the mountain
open roses
kissing in rain
not passing
let alone in real
fate, the petals on the ground
***
The trail reaches ...
in the old days
fog every day
sky fades
I lost the way of Summer
celestial rings were
the intimate thoughts
Colors and tones
Silence has no outputs
trapped ... sounds
wakes up ... and looks
have only memory
The sounds grew
with them and
I learned to serve their
why not stay
traveling with me ...
every minute
Thus colors
and sounds
senses are
record of my life
the progress made ...
memories and
remembrances
SUMMER
The paintings in the Summer
colors in the calm eyes
the vast land
promises
weet plotted
****
New stars in the Horizon
the flower of the day
unexpected youth
the wide virtue
traverses
***
The new hope, new earth
the heart and the look, lives
warm flesh the body
revealed fragile
on the palms of the earth
***
A red line
flame with lances
in on the edge of the lips
of land naked bodies
bare mysteries
***
Kissing thousands of degrees
free loves
the soul and body
a fragrance
in flaming yellow flowers
Multiply light ..Summer
Bionote
Dr. Kapardeli Eftichia has a Doctorate from ARTS AND CULTURE WORLD ACADEMY
Born in Athens and live in Patras. She writes poetry, stories, short stories, xai-kou , essays, novels. She deals with the painting and participates in treble choirs as a soprano. She studied journalism AKEM (Athenian training center). He has many awards in national competitions first, second and third prizes. Her work is included in many national and international anthologies. She is author of the Indian Academy Anthology http://worldpeaceacademy.blogspot.com/2010/10/poets-for-world-peace.html The first collections of poetry are confiding and light. She has a section at the University of Cyprus in Greek culture and is a member of the world poets society. The official website is http://world-poets.blogspot. com / is a member of the IWA (international writers) chaired by Teresinka Pereira Address Maizonos 229, TK 26222
kapardeli@gmail.com eftichiakapa@yahoo.com
http://eftichiakapa.blogspot.gr/2013_10_01_archive.html
1 Poem by Aaron C Le Mire
Alice in Atwater Village
My first kiss
was a dare
my first drink
was stolen
my first fuck
was a threesome
my first job
I was fired
my first love
had no heart
(may as well have been a whore)
my first fight
I lost and lied
my first car
was older than me
my first girlfriend
was a French cutie
(I’d never forgive myself for cheating)
my first fifteen minutes
I was seventeen
my first toke
was through someone’s lips
my first blowjob
was from the prom queen
I have known
no normal
I have known
no bounds
I’ve built up a tolerance
lung capacity
I inhale colors and sounds
effortlessly
that play in brilliant gashes
in front of me
I look back on my life so far
while I soak in memories
kaleidoscope lights
waves of lives, loves lost and
such a beautiful sight
enough to make bubbles
in my spine
I made the best with what I had
and with what I had I did alright
I put up a fight
I put a damn good fight.
Bionote
I’m an alumni of the University of Minnesota and a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, California. I've written six feature spec-scripts and a treatment for a reality TV show that garnered representation at N.S. Bienstock, one of the largest talent agencies in the United States.
My first kiss
was a dare
my first drink
was stolen
my first fuck
was a threesome
my first job
I was fired
my first love
had no heart
(may as well have been a whore)
my first fight
I lost and lied
my first car
was older than me
my first girlfriend
was a French cutie
(I’d never forgive myself for cheating)
my first fifteen minutes
I was seventeen
my first toke
was through someone’s lips
my first blowjob
was from the prom queen
I have known
no normal
I have known
no bounds
I’ve built up a tolerance
lung capacity
I inhale colors and sounds
effortlessly
that play in brilliant gashes
in front of me
I look back on my life so far
while I soak in memories
kaleidoscope lights
waves of lives, loves lost and
such a beautiful sight
enough to make bubbles
in my spine
I made the best with what I had
and with what I had I did alright
I put up a fight
I put a damn good fight.
Bionote
I’m an alumni of the University of Minnesota and a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, California. I've written six feature spec-scripts and a treatment for a reality TV show that garnered representation at N.S. Bienstock, one of the largest talent agencies in the United States.
3 Poems and Photos by Jennifer Lagier
Askew
Nature is out of plumb.
Sere spring shrinks wetlands,
shrivels garden, initiative, imagination.
Morning walks bring us eye-to-eye
with thirsty deer, frazzled raccoons,
local evidence of increased global warming.
Compulsory water rationing is imposed.
Along Ocean Avenue, empty planter boxes,
dying pines, desiccated maples.
Snowless Sierras, failing wells--
Deep inside Pacheco Pass,
San Luis reservoir nearly depleted.
Stressed cypress topple onto trails.
Goliaths so enfeebled by drought,
wind and gravity shove them off-kilter.
Skewed season, barren sky, stunning sun
accelerate freak summer symptoms.
Wizened limbs burst with premature blooms.
At Carmel River Lagoon
"my legs splashing over the edge of darkness, my heart on fire." ~ Mary Oliver
Tethered to habit and a small dog,
I sprint above crumpled beach,
greet morning walkers, floating otters,
egrets wading through grass.
Below me, incensed ocean
slams tumbling wave spume
against sculpted cove,
bronzed, glowing sand.
Among ancient cypress,
sleek blackbirds swivel beady eyes,
reconnoiter sodden picnic scraps,
squawk in gossiping covens.
Beneath burning horizon,
terns flutter, pierce elusive anchovies
within steaming, sheltered lagoon.
Gratitude burgeons; poetry captures.
Red Hot Pokers & Rocks
Whales spout just off rocky shore,
spew lacy umbrellas against cloudless horizon.
Winding trail along worn adobe bluff retains
shrinking puddles from scant, recent rainfall.
Strange spring bludgeons the coast with unseasonal hot flash,
pushes puzzled fruit trees into full blossom.
The ocean warms; fish migrate to cooler depths.
Baby harbor seals sicken, die by the hundreds.
Between boulders and sea, red hot pokers pulse,
Planet Earth’s flashing emergency lights.
Bionote
Jennifer Lagier has published nine books of poetry as well as in a variety of literary magazines. Her latest book, Camille Vérité, was just published by FutureCycle Press and is available on Amazon.com. She taught with California Poets in the Schools and is now a retired college librarian/instructor, member of the Italian American Writers Association, co-edits the Homestead Review, maintains web sites for Homestead Review, Monterey Poetry Review, Ping Pong Literary Journal and misfitmagazine.com. She also helps coordinate monthly Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium Second Sunday readings. Visit her website at: http://jlagier.net
Nature is out of plumb.
Sere spring shrinks wetlands,
shrivels garden, initiative, imagination.
Morning walks bring us eye-to-eye
with thirsty deer, frazzled raccoons,
local evidence of increased global warming.
Compulsory water rationing is imposed.
Along Ocean Avenue, empty planter boxes,
dying pines, desiccated maples.
Snowless Sierras, failing wells--
Deep inside Pacheco Pass,
San Luis reservoir nearly depleted.
Stressed cypress topple onto trails.
Goliaths so enfeebled by drought,
wind and gravity shove them off-kilter.
Skewed season, barren sky, stunning sun
accelerate freak summer symptoms.
Wizened limbs burst with premature blooms.
At Carmel River Lagoon
"my legs splashing over the edge of darkness, my heart on fire." ~ Mary Oliver
Tethered to habit and a small dog,
I sprint above crumpled beach,
greet morning walkers, floating otters,
egrets wading through grass.
Below me, incensed ocean
slams tumbling wave spume
against sculpted cove,
bronzed, glowing sand.
Among ancient cypress,
sleek blackbirds swivel beady eyes,
reconnoiter sodden picnic scraps,
squawk in gossiping covens.
Beneath burning horizon,
terns flutter, pierce elusive anchovies
within steaming, sheltered lagoon.
Gratitude burgeons; poetry captures.
Red Hot Pokers & Rocks
Whales spout just off rocky shore,
spew lacy umbrellas against cloudless horizon.
Winding trail along worn adobe bluff retains
shrinking puddles from scant, recent rainfall.
Strange spring bludgeons the coast with unseasonal hot flash,
pushes puzzled fruit trees into full blossom.
The ocean warms; fish migrate to cooler depths.
Baby harbor seals sicken, die by the hundreds.
Between boulders and sea, red hot pokers pulse,
Planet Earth’s flashing emergency lights.
Bionote
Jennifer Lagier has published nine books of poetry as well as in a variety of literary magazines. Her latest book, Camille Vérité, was just published by FutureCycle Press and is available on Amazon.com. She taught with California Poets in the Schools and is now a retired college librarian/instructor, member of the Italian American Writers Association, co-edits the Homestead Review, maintains web sites for Homestead Review, Monterey Poetry Review, Ping Pong Literary Journal and misfitmagazine.com. She also helps coordinate monthly Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium Second Sunday readings. Visit her website at: http://jlagier.net
1 Poem by Ava Collopy
AMBROSIA
I drank Ambrosia, tipped her whispering veins
Tip my veins and taste what is forbidden of mine
You can taste, smell, touch, hear, and see
But never comprehend my mind
Now my best years seem like an ancient city
And I can no longer comprehend the simplicity
Of my young, blunt hieroglyphics
So take a picture, it lasts longer
Before long age creeps in—the silent killer
And the person you loved to be is gone forever
Once on your feet, a striking warrior
Then you find yourself just sitting there, worrying
Conformity is the polite coffin of society
Responsibility meaning certain death
But the sterility of no thoughts or feelings
Makes you feel so clean
Your soul is salted earth, left infertile
Until the day you can’t even remember
When you leapt beyond understanding and drank Ambrosia
For now the liquid fire of your soul’s blood is dead
Bionote
Ava Collopy is published in Treading Water, Ascent Aspirations, and others. She’s from Oregon, U.S. and presently studies and does volunteer work in Ireland. Her website is: dreamscaperealities.weebly.com
I drank Ambrosia, tipped her whispering veins
Tip my veins and taste what is forbidden of mine
You can taste, smell, touch, hear, and see
But never comprehend my mind
Now my best years seem like an ancient city
And I can no longer comprehend the simplicity
Of my young, blunt hieroglyphics
So take a picture, it lasts longer
Before long age creeps in—the silent killer
And the person you loved to be is gone forever
Once on your feet, a striking warrior
Then you find yourself just sitting there, worrying
Conformity is the polite coffin of society
Responsibility meaning certain death
But the sterility of no thoughts or feelings
Makes you feel so clean
Your soul is salted earth, left infertile
Until the day you can’t even remember
When you leapt beyond understanding and drank Ambrosia
For now the liquid fire of your soul’s blood is dead
Bionote
Ava Collopy is published in Treading Water, Ascent Aspirations, and others. She’s from Oregon, U.S. and presently studies and does volunteer work in Ireland. Her website is: dreamscaperealities.weebly.com
3 Poems by Michael Caylo-Baradi
Meteorology
A cluster of skies
musters my soul
to the beat of
darkness falling,
sowing iridescent cities
globing your eyes.
They orbit
dreams,
to burn
their screams
animal
as storms.
Soon, we light
mornings
without
inhibitions,
to the beat of
darkness falling,
gathering
in the center
of an eye,
of something
spiraling
in familiar
rings of destruction
Sonoran Desert Border
A number of lips
take turns on a bottle.
Its mouth gleams
under moonlight,
a door into shadows
cast promiscuously.
The journey to the bottom
is pure thirst.
For now, everything
feels suspended
in clouds of laughter
and tease, hovering
over the edge of nowhere
detained from
laws of somewhere.
The sound
of insects harass
visions of tomorrows
deprived from sleep.
They are framed
in myths, or loosen lips
into a brawl.
Their plots live
on cries
for blood,
the way
their beasts
thrive in
the glory of
sweat and tears.
Our speed assails 45
and the radio fortifies it
in volumes of cool,
unable to cool down
into vanishing points
reared in mirrors
with limited views.
•
They transit spots
so blind
as fury
in surrender
cruising velocities
unhinged
from wheels
deflating
our flatness
in the usual traffic.
•
Their jams
stretch for maps
bruised
with faults
& valleys
rolling
breathless
on your spine.
Bionote
Michael Caylo-Baradi lives in California. You may find his work in The Common, Eclectica, Ink Sweat & Tears, Local Nomad, MiPOesias, Otoliths, Prick of the Spindle, and elsewhere. He reviews books and literary journals for New Pages.
A cluster of skies
musters my soul
to the beat of
darkness falling,
sowing iridescent cities
globing your eyes.
They orbit
dreams,
to burn
their screams
animal
as storms.
Soon, we light
mornings
without
inhibitions,
to the beat of
darkness falling,
gathering
in the center
of an eye,
of something
spiraling
in familiar
rings of destruction
Sonoran Desert Border
A number of lips
take turns on a bottle.
Its mouth gleams
under moonlight,
a door into shadows
cast promiscuously.
The journey to the bottom
is pure thirst.
For now, everything
feels suspended
in clouds of laughter
and tease, hovering
over the edge of nowhere
detained from
laws of somewhere.
The sound
of insects harass
visions of tomorrows
deprived from sleep.
They are framed
in myths, or loosen lips
into a brawl.
Their plots live
on cries
for blood,
the way
their beasts
thrive in
the glory of
sweat and tears.
Our speed assails 45
and the radio fortifies it
in volumes of cool,
unable to cool down
into vanishing points
reared in mirrors
with limited views.
•
They transit spots
so blind
as fury
in surrender
cruising velocities
unhinged
from wheels
deflating
our flatness
in the usual traffic.
•
Their jams
stretch for maps
bruised
with faults
& valleys
rolling
breathless
on your spine.
Bionote
Michael Caylo-Baradi lives in California. You may find his work in The Common, Eclectica, Ink Sweat & Tears, Local Nomad, MiPOesias, Otoliths, Prick of the Spindle, and elsewhere. He reviews books and literary journals for New Pages.
5 Poems by Lea Deschenes
This Is How I Tell You That I Love You
If you shoot at the king and you waver,
no one will blink at the things that come next.
He’ll turn to the crowd like the sun going down,
and together they’ll show you the shield of their backs.
Then come the pincers, the chains and the tower—
even the dogs turn away from your shame
for you opened your mouth like the sight of a gun
and who sees the difference at such close range?
And if the king lives like a bug trapped in amber,
he’s sentenced you both to flyspeck the same stone:
there’s a warm cast to each iron cufflink
and a silence that’s worn like a groove in the floor.
Now all that’s left is a name in your throats
that finds no clear exit and circles your rooms
like a firefly too weak to extinguish a dark
whose shadows are barbed. They stick to your skins.
You mutter past everything ripped from your mouth
and wish that he’d left a clean hole that would heal.
He carries a pink scrap around in a box.
It sings him to sleep past the weight of his crown.
Revisionist
No one mentions Eurydice after Orpheus. She’s presumed
lost forever when he can’t see her face, shuffled
with Hades’ mass of selfless dead. She provides
the hero conflict and is gone.
No one speaks of her driving the chariot that drags the sun
or mentions her name means justice that spreads like a flood.
Some say she died dancing with naiads. Some posit faun rape.
Some say Inanna dressed up in Greek clothes and toned down.
Maybe light tired her. Maybe her eyes needed rest.
I’m saying maybe the snake she ran into wasn’t a viper.
Maybe he whispered of knowledge hid underground
and offered her fruit she declined to share.
Maybe she said goodbye and walked off on her own
for reasons she never divulged to the man with the lyre.
Love’s a wonderful thing, but not the only.
It comes around in time like an orbiting sun.
It’s just a long walk through cold dark.
She could go it alone.
Upon this Beach, I Build my Sandcastle
It’s amazing how these boneless, brainless things
shrug themselves out of their shells and wave
a feathered fan at each backhand ocean slap—
feed off it, even—
grow fat off particulate matter
and debris from Spanish shipwrecks,
sunken towers, dead seaweed,
pirated chests.
I could scour these stones every day, every hour if I wanted.
They’ll keep coming. They’ll fasten and feed.
They’ll cling with tenacious devotion. Their microscopic
hordes will find purchase in hair-fine cracks
and they’ll bore their way into my skin,
through my bones. They’ll leave me full
of holes and shell fragments until I crumble,
more host to an ecosystem than woman.
I’ll return to the salt from whence I came.
Put your ear to my mouth, you’ll hear
their choral chant of hungers.
Put your mouth to my ear,
and I’ll only hear tide.
The Magician’s Last Trick
I never disappear completely. Say the magic word,
and, bad penny that I am—I am there!—
just behind your far shoulder.
I’m weary of smoke and spectacle. I’ve spent
years at the bottom of that watery tank,
weighted by rusted chains.
It’s been a long, hard, solitary time.
My lungs ache even though I’ve quit smoking
and my joints don’t want to bend.
All I want is for you to turn and see me here,
call me by my given name, and forget our professions.
To learn how you’ve been all this time I’ve been holding my breath.
I must be crazy to come out of hiding with empty pockets,
to bend your ear without pulling quarters. I know
myself to be easily disposable, light diversion. Once
you walked out mid-matinee. I couldn’t
pick those cuffs for years. To be honest,
they still catch my sleeve.
So here’s your drowned rat come up
from the sewers, your fifth-rate hack
to fill in between acts on the bill.
Here I am, human as I can manage,
hands held up in the air, saying
Abracadabra! How are you? Don’t shoot.
Obligatory Poem About a Tree
The Russian Olive in our backyard
grew from wild seed. It paws the deck,
claws phone wires. Cut to the ground
twice, it endures where peaches withered.
The spotted fruit feeds only birds,
tastes like raw aspirin. I hacked
at its rampant overabundance
with kitchen shears, loppers, a saw.
It’s better at winter than I am.
Gray until frost breaks, it rebounds
from each severance whole,
a thousand buds crowding its stump.
Bionote
Lea Deschenes is a poet/designer living in Worcester, MA and the current Creative Director of Damfino Press (damfinopress.com). Her first full-length book The Constant Velocity of Trains was published by Write Bloody Publishing. She once found a five-leaf clover during a solar eclipse. She does not personally collect antique shoelaces because she's too busy working on her second book, Crocus.
If you shoot at the king and you waver,
no one will blink at the things that come next.
He’ll turn to the crowd like the sun going down,
and together they’ll show you the shield of their backs.
Then come the pincers, the chains and the tower—
even the dogs turn away from your shame
for you opened your mouth like the sight of a gun
and who sees the difference at such close range?
And if the king lives like a bug trapped in amber,
he’s sentenced you both to flyspeck the same stone:
there’s a warm cast to each iron cufflink
and a silence that’s worn like a groove in the floor.
Now all that’s left is a name in your throats
that finds no clear exit and circles your rooms
like a firefly too weak to extinguish a dark
whose shadows are barbed. They stick to your skins.
You mutter past everything ripped from your mouth
and wish that he’d left a clean hole that would heal.
He carries a pink scrap around in a box.
It sings him to sleep past the weight of his crown.
Revisionist
No one mentions Eurydice after Orpheus. She’s presumed
lost forever when he can’t see her face, shuffled
with Hades’ mass of selfless dead. She provides
the hero conflict and is gone.
No one speaks of her driving the chariot that drags the sun
or mentions her name means justice that spreads like a flood.
Some say she died dancing with naiads. Some posit faun rape.
Some say Inanna dressed up in Greek clothes and toned down.
Maybe light tired her. Maybe her eyes needed rest.
I’m saying maybe the snake she ran into wasn’t a viper.
Maybe he whispered of knowledge hid underground
and offered her fruit she declined to share.
Maybe she said goodbye and walked off on her own
for reasons she never divulged to the man with the lyre.
Love’s a wonderful thing, but not the only.
It comes around in time like an orbiting sun.
It’s just a long walk through cold dark.
She could go it alone.
Upon this Beach, I Build my Sandcastle
It’s amazing how these boneless, brainless things
shrug themselves out of their shells and wave
a feathered fan at each backhand ocean slap—
feed off it, even—
grow fat off particulate matter
and debris from Spanish shipwrecks,
sunken towers, dead seaweed,
pirated chests.
I could scour these stones every day, every hour if I wanted.
They’ll keep coming. They’ll fasten and feed.
They’ll cling with tenacious devotion. Their microscopic
hordes will find purchase in hair-fine cracks
and they’ll bore their way into my skin,
through my bones. They’ll leave me full
of holes and shell fragments until I crumble,
more host to an ecosystem than woman.
I’ll return to the salt from whence I came.
Put your ear to my mouth, you’ll hear
their choral chant of hungers.
Put your mouth to my ear,
and I’ll only hear tide.
The Magician’s Last Trick
I never disappear completely. Say the magic word,
and, bad penny that I am—I am there!—
just behind your far shoulder.
I’m weary of smoke and spectacle. I’ve spent
years at the bottom of that watery tank,
weighted by rusted chains.
It’s been a long, hard, solitary time.
My lungs ache even though I’ve quit smoking
and my joints don’t want to bend.
All I want is for you to turn and see me here,
call me by my given name, and forget our professions.
To learn how you’ve been all this time I’ve been holding my breath.
I must be crazy to come out of hiding with empty pockets,
to bend your ear without pulling quarters. I know
myself to be easily disposable, light diversion. Once
you walked out mid-matinee. I couldn’t
pick those cuffs for years. To be honest,
they still catch my sleeve.
So here’s your drowned rat come up
from the sewers, your fifth-rate hack
to fill in between acts on the bill.
Here I am, human as I can manage,
hands held up in the air, saying
Abracadabra! How are you? Don’t shoot.
Obligatory Poem About a Tree
The Russian Olive in our backyard
grew from wild seed. It paws the deck,
claws phone wires. Cut to the ground
twice, it endures where peaches withered.
The spotted fruit feeds only birds,
tastes like raw aspirin. I hacked
at its rampant overabundance
with kitchen shears, loppers, a saw.
It’s better at winter than I am.
Gray until frost breaks, it rebounds
from each severance whole,
a thousand buds crowding its stump.
Bionote
Lea Deschenes is a poet/designer living in Worcester, MA and the current Creative Director of Damfino Press (damfinopress.com). Her first full-length book The Constant Velocity of Trains was published by Write Bloody Publishing. She once found a five-leaf clover during a solar eclipse. She does not personally collect antique shoelaces because she's too busy working on her second book, Crocus.
4 Poems by Tse Hao Guang
hyperlinkage
There is only one rule in hyper-
linkage, to wit, you do not refer to
yourself. Keeping that in mind in
this paradise of cut-and-paste is
an endless deferral. This is a poem,
not a website. Outside it is raining.
Your words are always blue and
underlined, not the blue of an eye
nor an atmosphere. This freedom—
now any word may be a sign for any
thing—disturbs me. I weary of
traversing Edens. Contractions.
I stroll through the nearby garden
(sky's another shade of blue now),
I book a reading room in the library,
I wonder when our paths will next
fork towards each other. My novels
talk to each other, making essays.
Who can speak in hyperlink?
I can only say a name, sometimes
sounding like the ozone breeze post-
pour, sometimes like a knife wound,
furtive, again, like a touch typist alone
in a room, again, again, and again.
Camera Lucida
There are no
lights—only pale
reflections that
point inwards.
A subtle twist of
fingers and images
accumulate like
merit in my mind.
This black box—
second skin, third
eye, fourth wall—
is a kind of loss.
Brothers and Sisters
Sitting around a table we raise
mediations like glasses, like shields.
We discuss personalities, compare
love languages, psychoanalyse.
We are lions, roaming concrete
jungles, filling abstract appetites,
dreaming of wrenching tendon,
oil off robot’s back, desire machine.
Inserting protuberances into
orifices we mouth mummified love.
Our sinews wrapped about each
other; this slow, untwisting thread.
Bonsai Patience
After Octavio Paz
Tall tree in the ear
gardened in grace—
when you burst this brittle
pot, will I, now broken,
learn how to listen,
lie face down,
bury my head in the richest
earth, and, mouth
full, go praising
each fruit?
Bionote
Tse Hao Guang is interested in form and formation, creativity and quotation, lyrics and line breaks. His poetry has appeared in QLRS, Prairie Schooner, Softblow and Third Coast, amongst other venues. He has a chapbook, hyperlinkage (Math Paper Press, 2013), and is working on a full-length collection, tentatively titled Belonging.
There is only one rule in hyper-
linkage, to wit, you do not refer to
yourself. Keeping that in mind in
this paradise of cut-and-paste is
an endless deferral. This is a poem,
not a website. Outside it is raining.
Your words are always blue and
underlined, not the blue of an eye
nor an atmosphere. This freedom—
now any word may be a sign for any
thing—disturbs me. I weary of
traversing Edens. Contractions.
I stroll through the nearby garden
(sky's another shade of blue now),
I book a reading room in the library,
I wonder when our paths will next
fork towards each other. My novels
talk to each other, making essays.
Who can speak in hyperlink?
I can only say a name, sometimes
sounding like the ozone breeze post-
pour, sometimes like a knife wound,
furtive, again, like a touch typist alone
in a room, again, again, and again.
Camera Lucida
There are no
lights—only pale
reflections that
point inwards.
A subtle twist of
fingers and images
accumulate like
merit in my mind.
This black box—
second skin, third
eye, fourth wall—
is a kind of loss.
Brothers and Sisters
Sitting around a table we raise
mediations like glasses, like shields.
We discuss personalities, compare
love languages, psychoanalyse.
We are lions, roaming concrete
jungles, filling abstract appetites,
dreaming of wrenching tendon,
oil off robot’s back, desire machine.
Inserting protuberances into
orifices we mouth mummified love.
Our sinews wrapped about each
other; this slow, untwisting thread.
Bonsai Patience
After Octavio Paz
Tall tree in the ear
gardened in grace—
when you burst this brittle
pot, will I, now broken,
learn how to listen,
lie face down,
bury my head in the richest
earth, and, mouth
full, go praising
each fruit?
Bionote
Tse Hao Guang is interested in form and formation, creativity and quotation, lyrics and line breaks. His poetry has appeared in QLRS, Prairie Schooner, Softblow and Third Coast, amongst other venues. He has a chapbook, hyperlinkage (Math Paper Press, 2013), and is working on a full-length collection, tentatively titled Belonging.
1 Poem by Prerna Bakshi
A Bad Taste
Spilling down my throat
are these tears
I shed for you,
on your behalf,
for you failed to
even do that for me.
So I cried
for the last time,
before gulping down
these salt infused tears you gave me,
that accumulated over time,
causing me high blood pressure – a memorable
gift from you
that will last a lifetime.
All this gulping down
has left a bad taste in my mouth
and like all bad tastes do
they remind you to
never try them again.
You will now linger
like a bad taste
on my tongue.
That’s as close as
you'll ever get.
Bionote
Prerna Bakshi is a poet and writer of Indian origin currently based in Macao. Her work has previously been published in over two dozen journals and magazines, most recently in Grey Sparrow Journal, Silver Birch Press, Wilderness House Literary Review, Kabul Press, and Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature. She tweets at @bprerna
Spilling down my throat
are these tears
I shed for you,
on your behalf,
for you failed to
even do that for me.
So I cried
for the last time,
before gulping down
these salt infused tears you gave me,
that accumulated over time,
causing me high blood pressure – a memorable
gift from you
that will last a lifetime.
All this gulping down
has left a bad taste in my mouth
and like all bad tastes do
they remind you to
never try them again.
You will now linger
like a bad taste
on my tongue.
That’s as close as
you'll ever get.
Bionote
Prerna Bakshi is a poet and writer of Indian origin currently based in Macao. Her work has previously been published in over two dozen journals and magazines, most recently in Grey Sparrow Journal, Silver Birch Press, Wilderness House Literary Review, Kabul Press, and Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature. She tweets at @bprerna
3 Poems by Harvey L. Hix
So how can ordinary people counter the assault of an increasingly violent state?
(Arundhati Roy)
Though traditionally attributed
to the great master, court painter Wan Unh,
the screen itself shows the unlikelihood
of so imprimatured an origin.
Insistence on orchid after orchid,
for example, a mode of attention
to the flower as flower permitted
in what dynasty? Or composition:
clusters arrayed against all principle,
as orchids themselves grow where nothing should.
The background too plain, the whole too simple.
Black ink, white paper fading, grayed toward
each other. Each plant blooms from its panel
impossibly, proof of an unruly hand.
What is given as reality here?
(Wilhelm Dilthey)
It’s well-traveled, not difficult, clearly marked,
the hiking trail up to and along the ridge.
It branches from and into others, networked
over these mountains knuckled along a gorge.
If to your upturned palms rising things (birds, fire)
descended, like the Buddha you would carry
nothing, leave nothing behind. As (they say here)
he did on hills like these, even these very.
The monks left to posterity no account
of how they carved into so sheer a cliff face
so large a statue. It was no monument,
but marked — was — the Buddha’s presence in this place.
From the trail one can see but not draw near it,
this image, equally stone and spirit.
Why would I see she? What you mean?
(Shani Mootoo)
I see she surface, see she dive.
I see she reckless behind the wheel.
I see she hustle, jitterbug, jive.
I see she several, many, all.
I see she coinage, comma splice,
solecism, anacoluthon.
I see she scanning for sea glass,
cold wind here be damned, and cold rain.
I see she camo, target practice.
I see she jungle cat, carnivore.
5-speed, 426 Hemi.
I see she soda, hear she fizz.
Now, after all what came before.
I see she see me see she see.
Bionote
H. L. Hix’s recent books include a poetry collection, I’m Here to Learn to Dream in Your Language (Etruscan Press, 2015), and an art/poetry anthology, Ley Lines (Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2014). His website is www.hlhix.com.
(Arundhati Roy)
Though traditionally attributed
to the great master, court painter Wan Unh,
the screen itself shows the unlikelihood
of so imprimatured an origin.
Insistence on orchid after orchid,
for example, a mode of attention
to the flower as flower permitted
in what dynasty? Or composition:
clusters arrayed against all principle,
as orchids themselves grow where nothing should.
The background too plain, the whole too simple.
Black ink, white paper fading, grayed toward
each other. Each plant blooms from its panel
impossibly, proof of an unruly hand.
What is given as reality here?
(Wilhelm Dilthey)
It’s well-traveled, not difficult, clearly marked,
the hiking trail up to and along the ridge.
It branches from and into others, networked
over these mountains knuckled along a gorge.
If to your upturned palms rising things (birds, fire)
descended, like the Buddha you would carry
nothing, leave nothing behind. As (they say here)
he did on hills like these, even these very.
The monks left to posterity no account
of how they carved into so sheer a cliff face
so large a statue. It was no monument,
but marked — was — the Buddha’s presence in this place.
From the trail one can see but not draw near it,
this image, equally stone and spirit.
Why would I see she? What you mean?
(Shani Mootoo)
I see she surface, see she dive.
I see she reckless behind the wheel.
I see she hustle, jitterbug, jive.
I see she several, many, all.
I see she coinage, comma splice,
solecism, anacoluthon.
I see she scanning for sea glass,
cold wind here be damned, and cold rain.
I see she camo, target practice.
I see she jungle cat, carnivore.
5-speed, 426 Hemi.
I see she soda, hear she fizz.
Now, after all what came before.
I see she see me see she see.
Bionote
H. L. Hix’s recent books include a poetry collection, I’m Here to Learn to Dream in Your Language (Etruscan Press, 2015), and an art/poetry anthology, Ley Lines (Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2014). His website is www.hlhix.com.
2 Poems by Marilyn Kurtz
Dance!
“I grow them,” she said
Of the 7 and 8 and 9
Year olds she bends
Into little dancers
While she leaps
Across the stage
Into the night,
The sister of my
Dreams.
In the air,
Claire.
A Painting by Barnet Newman (all red)
The crippled curl,
Wheeling in our twisted wombs
To be flung naked,
Startled,
On a bed of rocks.
You, stranger, come forth
In Broad day,
Large with light,
on eagle wings.
Spanning Space
Not space at all
But all space.
The dark eyes
He has overrun with
Blood.
Flaring ladders
Across the four-fold prism
Of our weighty lids
Where once we caught
Grasshoppers.
How dare he stretch
A canvas
Across the sun!
Bionote
Marilyn Kurtz, Ph.D, is an adj. Professor in the English department at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York. She received her doctorate from The City University of New York, with a dissertation [Virginia Woolf: Reflections and Reverberations American University Studies Volume 119 of American university studies: English language and literature, ISSN 0741-0700 Publisher: P. Lang (1990)]. She edited and wrote for magazines and has passed on her learning to her students, who appreciate her.
“I grow them,” she said
Of the 7 and 8 and 9
Year olds she bends
Into little dancers
While she leaps
Across the stage
Into the night,
The sister of my
Dreams.
In the air,
Claire.
A Painting by Barnet Newman (all red)
The crippled curl,
Wheeling in our twisted wombs
To be flung naked,
Startled,
On a bed of rocks.
You, stranger, come forth
In Broad day,
Large with light,
on eagle wings.
Spanning Space
Not space at all
But all space.
The dark eyes
He has overrun with
Blood.
Flaring ladders
Across the four-fold prism
Of our weighty lids
Where once we caught
Grasshoppers.
How dare he stretch
A canvas
Across the sun!
Bionote
Marilyn Kurtz, Ph.D, is an adj. Professor in the English department at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York. She received her doctorate from The City University of New York, with a dissertation [Virginia Woolf: Reflections and Reverberations American University Studies Volume 119 of American university studies: English language and literature, ISSN 0741-0700 Publisher: P. Lang (1990)]. She edited and wrote for magazines and has passed on her learning to her students, who appreciate her.
7 Haiku by Catfish McDaris
Aida
She is always there
my only true love forever
her smile is my soul.
爱达
她总是无时不在
我唯一永恒的真爱
其笑容乃我之灵魂
California
Dance during summer
making love to the raindrops
farmers smile at crops.
加利福尼亚州
在夏日翩翩起舞
与雨滴做爱正酣
农夫对着庄稼微笑。
Nomads
Ear always to ground
listening for buffalo
death food clothes home life.
North
Autumn winds whisper
kites smiling down from above
old man snow comes soon.
Meow
A green hummingbird
flutters outside the window
cat wants a new friend.
Texas
The wind never stops
exceptions become the rule
the truth never is.
.
Bionote
Catfish McDaris’ most infamous chapbook is Prying with Jack Micheline and Charles Bukowski. His best readings were in Paris at the Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore and with Jimmy"the ghost of Hendrix"Spencer in NYC on 42nd St. He’s done over 25 chaps in the last 25 years. He’s been in the New York Quarterly, Slipstream, Pearl, Main St. Rag, Café Review, Chiron Review, Zen Tattoo, Wormwood Review, Great Weather For Media, Silver Birch Press, and Graffiti and been nominated for 15 Pushcarts, Best of Net in 2010, 2013, and 2014, he won the Uprising Award in 1999, and won the Flash Fiction Contest judged by the U.S. Poet Laureate in 2009. Catfish McDaris won the the Thelonius Monk Award in 2015. He was in the Louisiana Review, George Mason Univ.Press, and New Coin from Rhodes Univ. in South Africa. He’s recently been translated into French, Polish, Swedish, Arabic, Bengali, Tagalog, and Esperanto. His 25 years of published material is in the Special Archives Collection at Marquette Univ. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He’s listed as an American pot in Wikipedia.
She is always there
my only true love forever
her smile is my soul.
爱达
她总是无时不在
我唯一永恒的真爱
其笑容乃我之灵魂
California
Dance during summer
making love to the raindrops
farmers smile at crops.
加利福尼亚州
在夏日翩翩起舞
与雨滴做爱正酣
农夫对着庄稼微笑。
Nomads
Ear always to ground
listening for buffalo
death food clothes home life.
North
Autumn winds whisper
kites smiling down from above
old man snow comes soon.
Meow
A green hummingbird
flutters outside the window
cat wants a new friend.
Texas
The wind never stops
exceptions become the rule
the truth never is.
.
Bionote
Catfish McDaris’ most infamous chapbook is Prying with Jack Micheline and Charles Bukowski. His best readings were in Paris at the Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore and with Jimmy"the ghost of Hendrix"Spencer in NYC on 42nd St. He’s done over 25 chaps in the last 25 years. He’s been in the New York Quarterly, Slipstream, Pearl, Main St. Rag, Café Review, Chiron Review, Zen Tattoo, Wormwood Review, Great Weather For Media, Silver Birch Press, and Graffiti and been nominated for 15 Pushcarts, Best of Net in 2010, 2013, and 2014, he won the Uprising Award in 1999, and won the Flash Fiction Contest judged by the U.S. Poet Laureate in 2009. Catfish McDaris won the the Thelonius Monk Award in 2015. He was in the Louisiana Review, George Mason Univ.Press, and New Coin from Rhodes Univ. in South Africa. He’s recently been translated into French, Polish, Swedish, Arabic, Bengali, Tagalog, and Esperanto. His 25 years of published material is in the Special Archives Collection at Marquette Univ. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He’s listed as an American pot in Wikipedia.
2 Poems by George Kalamaras
I Thought Hound. I Thought Sorrow
I thought of the hound and sorrowed for her.
Perhaps I sensed her swampy, backwoods breed.
Paranoia was part of my makeup.
It had dogged me through too many earth scents.
Like a willow’s shadow stung by the moon.
Perhaps I thought the hound and sorrowed her.
The first abdominal segment in ants
is fused with the thorax. What did I know
of slipped-speech grief? Of a baying beneath
what the earth ceased to be? I created
myself in the image of the earth’s death.
How all things thrive, even when—good—they live.
Perhaps I sensed a paranoid part break-
ing up in the worn gutters of my throat.
Say my mind drifts too much just one more time.
I will exile you to Galápagos
outcrops on the banished turtle’s back. Hounds,
when driven mad with tracks, sense something left
just for their abandonment. The coonhound
in the photo has a pleasing, pleading
expression. It has more to do with want,
not need. We all need to be touched and loved.
And we want the great ocean of boiling
broth our blood makes in the presence of dogs
who give us ourselves in the ambered brown
of their eye. I thought hound, I thought sorrow.
Sometimes joining two independent thoughts
with a comma calls to mind the first wolves
and the campfires we made to cull them
into our lives. What do we know of slipped
flaks of earth asking the coon tracks tree-ward
on the long climb to being stuck? The hound
sees the hawk and marvels the air it drinks.
Let’s say my poems don’t track straight narrative
lines. Let’s say you find them campfire cold,
not worthy to curl up against when wind
enters your bones and drives you to please please
plead for emotional release. Stand up
straight. Go ahead and carve your initials
into the shagbark of a hickory.
Let the juice of the mulberry release.
Sorrow your words just right. See what they need.
All That Feeds
Based on a photograph of nine-year-old Michael Nabors near the black
and tan coonhound and her nine puppies he found in the hollow of a tree
near his home in Webster Groves, Missouri, 1949
How she knew to find a tree hollow, only the moon can say.
Perhaps she swallowed a star from the damp ponds in a sassafras root.
Sometimes, we are guided by what we cannot see.
I remember King Kong, 1960. The next fifty-five years, avoiding the dark roarings of
my mouth.
Nine puppies says we mustn’t wander far from the milk.
Numerology can sometimes be practical, other times a slake of sawdust in the ear.
Was she surprised when the fifth one arrived? And the seventh? The ninth?
What of her body? And the blood?
Did she tongue them and lick them dry, piling leaves around them?
Chew the umbilical cord with an instinct that said, We must eat all that feeds us?
In Webster Groves. In a woods we can barely see.
In 1949. Or ‘50. Or the year known simply as, I-must-somehow-keep-them-alive.
Little hound-self giving yourself unto the world. Galaxy-bound and brown.
I would possum and coon and shiver-tree my mouth.
I would keep you just as you are, sixty-six years late.
Praise be the mother of god spelled backwards in the backwoods of Missouri.
That sweet Nabors boy who found you as a neighbor next door? How did a nine-year-old
find precisely nine puppies in 1949 in the hollow of a tree?
It is like riding my tricycle down three cement stairs when I was three, and three stitches
in my forehead just over my third eye. In Chicago, a name with three syllables,
beginning with the alphabet’s third sway.
Sometimes we wake and holler and all abrupt.
Sometimes we words and leave out as we monkey-bar the night.
The blood and slush that passeth all understanding moves nutrients from here to there
through the kind, cruel blood-light of the cord.
Urges a tree hollow into something wiggling, whimpering, and full.
Beautiful little hound rounding out my blood.
Perhaps you swallowed a star. Perhaps the star ate you.
Bionote
George Kalamaras, Poet Laureate of Indiana, is the author of seven books of poetry and seven chapbooks, including The Mining Camps of the Mouth (2012), winner of the New Michigan Press/DIAGRAM chapbook contest, Kingdom of Throat-Stuck Luck (2011), winner of the Elixir Press Poetry Prize, and The Theory and Function of Mangoes (2000), winner of the Four Way Books Intro Series. He is Professor of English at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, where he has taught since 1990.
I thought of the hound and sorrowed for her.
Perhaps I sensed her swampy, backwoods breed.
Paranoia was part of my makeup.
It had dogged me through too many earth scents.
Like a willow’s shadow stung by the moon.
Perhaps I thought the hound and sorrowed her.
The first abdominal segment in ants
is fused with the thorax. What did I know
of slipped-speech grief? Of a baying beneath
what the earth ceased to be? I created
myself in the image of the earth’s death.
How all things thrive, even when—good—they live.
Perhaps I sensed a paranoid part break-
ing up in the worn gutters of my throat.
Say my mind drifts too much just one more time.
I will exile you to Galápagos
outcrops on the banished turtle’s back. Hounds,
when driven mad with tracks, sense something left
just for their abandonment. The coonhound
in the photo has a pleasing, pleading
expression. It has more to do with want,
not need. We all need to be touched and loved.
And we want the great ocean of boiling
broth our blood makes in the presence of dogs
who give us ourselves in the ambered brown
of their eye. I thought hound, I thought sorrow.
Sometimes joining two independent thoughts
with a comma calls to mind the first wolves
and the campfires we made to cull them
into our lives. What do we know of slipped
flaks of earth asking the coon tracks tree-ward
on the long climb to being stuck? The hound
sees the hawk and marvels the air it drinks.
Let’s say my poems don’t track straight narrative
lines. Let’s say you find them campfire cold,
not worthy to curl up against when wind
enters your bones and drives you to please please
plead for emotional release. Stand up
straight. Go ahead and carve your initials
into the shagbark of a hickory.
Let the juice of the mulberry release.
Sorrow your words just right. See what they need.
All That Feeds
Based on a photograph of nine-year-old Michael Nabors near the black
and tan coonhound and her nine puppies he found in the hollow of a tree
near his home in Webster Groves, Missouri, 1949
How she knew to find a tree hollow, only the moon can say.
Perhaps she swallowed a star from the damp ponds in a sassafras root.
Sometimes, we are guided by what we cannot see.
I remember King Kong, 1960. The next fifty-five years, avoiding the dark roarings of
my mouth.
Nine puppies says we mustn’t wander far from the milk.
Numerology can sometimes be practical, other times a slake of sawdust in the ear.
Was she surprised when the fifth one arrived? And the seventh? The ninth?
What of her body? And the blood?
Did she tongue them and lick them dry, piling leaves around them?
Chew the umbilical cord with an instinct that said, We must eat all that feeds us?
In Webster Groves. In a woods we can barely see.
In 1949. Or ‘50. Or the year known simply as, I-must-somehow-keep-them-alive.
Little hound-self giving yourself unto the world. Galaxy-bound and brown.
I would possum and coon and shiver-tree my mouth.
I would keep you just as you are, sixty-six years late.
Praise be the mother of god spelled backwards in the backwoods of Missouri.
That sweet Nabors boy who found you as a neighbor next door? How did a nine-year-old
find precisely nine puppies in 1949 in the hollow of a tree?
It is like riding my tricycle down three cement stairs when I was three, and three stitches
in my forehead just over my third eye. In Chicago, a name with three syllables,
beginning with the alphabet’s third sway.
Sometimes we wake and holler and all abrupt.
Sometimes we words and leave out as we monkey-bar the night.
The blood and slush that passeth all understanding moves nutrients from here to there
through the kind, cruel blood-light of the cord.
Urges a tree hollow into something wiggling, whimpering, and full.
Beautiful little hound rounding out my blood.
Perhaps you swallowed a star. Perhaps the star ate you.
Bionote
George Kalamaras, Poet Laureate of Indiana, is the author of seven books of poetry and seven chapbooks, including The Mining Camps of the Mouth (2012), winner of the New Michigan Press/DIAGRAM chapbook contest, Kingdom of Throat-Stuck Luck (2011), winner of the Elixir Press Poetry Prize, and The Theory and Function of Mangoes (2000), winner of the Four Way Books Intro Series. He is Professor of English at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, where he has taught since 1990.
4 Poems by Chung Ho-seung
Those Who I Love
I do not love those who do not have their shades.
I do not love those who do not love their shades.
I do love those who become the shade of the tree.
The sunlight is bright because it has its shade.
Sitting in the shade of a tree, I see the sunshine coming through the leaves.
How beautiful the world is!
I do not love those who don't have their tears.
I do not love those who do not love tears.
Pleasure is not pleasure if it does not have tears.
Sitting in the shade,
I see those who clean someone's tears.
How beautiful the world is!
Song of Farewell
You are leaving me.
If you can postpone your departure just a bit,
It will not be that late, because I love you.
Then, I will go first to the destination where you are heading
and become the sunset glow on your back from there.
I will adjust my outfit and will be a star singing for you
In the darkness when the darkness creeps into the village.
You are leaving me.
If you can postpone your departure just a bit,
It will not be that late, because I love you.
About the Bottom
Only those who went down to the bottom can tell that the bottom was invisible.
They just say that they walked to the bottom and
That those who walked to the bottom could return.
Only those who rise up from the bottom can say that they could not reach farther than the bottom[MA1] --,
Therefore, they just are rising from the bottom.[MA2]
Only those who return from the bottom of the floor can say that there are no more bottoms
And that the bottom is invisible,
Therefore, they just are rising from the bottom.
Broken into Pieces
The earthen Buddha
I bought as a souvenir at Lumbini*
Fell down to the floor,
Broken into pieces.
Arms are broken into pieces,
Legs are broken into pieces,
Throat is broken into pieces, and
Toes are broken into pieces.
I knelt down to find instant glue from the drawer
To put the pieces together.
Then, Buddha touched my head.
He who was trying to put the pieces together
Comforted me:
“Once broken, you would live in a broken shape.
as it is.”
*Lumbini: the birthplace of the Lord Buddha in Nepal.
The above four poems are translated by Dr. Yearn Hong Choi, the founding president of Korean Poets Group in the United States
Bionote
Chung Ho-seung is one of most famed Korean poets in Korea. He is visiting Washington and is going to read his poems and talks about his life and poetry at the Korean Cultural Center on March 20, 2015.
I do not love those who do not have their shades.
I do not love those who do not love their shades.
I do love those who become the shade of the tree.
The sunlight is bright because it has its shade.
Sitting in the shade of a tree, I see the sunshine coming through the leaves.
How beautiful the world is!
I do not love those who don't have their tears.
I do not love those who do not love tears.
Pleasure is not pleasure if it does not have tears.
Sitting in the shade,
I see those who clean someone's tears.
How beautiful the world is!
Song of Farewell
You are leaving me.
If you can postpone your departure just a bit,
It will not be that late, because I love you.
Then, I will go first to the destination where you are heading
and become the sunset glow on your back from there.
I will adjust my outfit and will be a star singing for you
In the darkness when the darkness creeps into the village.
You are leaving me.
If you can postpone your departure just a bit,
It will not be that late, because I love you.
About the Bottom
Only those who went down to the bottom can tell that the bottom was invisible.
They just say that they walked to the bottom and
That those who walked to the bottom could return.
Only those who rise up from the bottom can say that they could not reach farther than the bottom[MA1] --,
Therefore, they just are rising from the bottom.[MA2]
Only those who return from the bottom of the floor can say that there are no more bottoms
And that the bottom is invisible,
Therefore, they just are rising from the bottom.
Broken into Pieces
The earthen Buddha
I bought as a souvenir at Lumbini*
Fell down to the floor,
Broken into pieces.
Arms are broken into pieces,
Legs are broken into pieces,
Throat is broken into pieces, and
Toes are broken into pieces.
I knelt down to find instant glue from the drawer
To put the pieces together.
Then, Buddha touched my head.
He who was trying to put the pieces together
Comforted me:
“Once broken, you would live in a broken shape.
as it is.”
*Lumbini: the birthplace of the Lord Buddha in Nepal.
The above four poems are translated by Dr. Yearn Hong Choi, the founding president of Korean Poets Group in the United States
Bionote
Chung Ho-seung is one of most famed Korean poets in Korea. He is visiting Washington and is going to read his poems and talks about his life and poetry at the Korean Cultural Center on March 20, 2015.
1 Poem by Marc Carver
LOST
I want to walk the streets again
and find love,
love in the cracks of the pavement
love in stranger's eyes
love in homeless eyes of blue.
I want to love again
the man i once was.
The man every day i get further from.
Bionote
I have had some 1200 poems listed around the web and have seven collections of poetry but the most important thing to me is when someone I don't know sends me an email and says they like my work. It means I am doing something right.
I want to walk the streets again
and find love,
love in the cracks of the pavement
love in stranger's eyes
love in homeless eyes of blue.
I want to love again
the man i once was.
The man every day i get further from.
Bionote
I have had some 1200 poems listed around the web and have seven collections of poetry but the most important thing to me is when someone I don't know sends me an email and says they like my work. It means I am doing something right.
1 Poem by Peter Lim
THE BOUNTY OF MY HARVEST*
The harvest is over this year
I wait for next year's summer
Nature fails in its promise
One season faithfully follows another.
Yet the bounty of my harvest
Is richer than any that nature can provide
In your loving heart shines the eternal green pasture
I need nothing more---all else I set aside.
Our love is the ripening
Of all that grows in this fertile land
Far away from the fever and fret of life
Upon luxuriant and faithful soil we stand.
Every seed of love we plant together
Will flower and grow to be ours alone
This is our pasture of endless beauty and joy
This is the most splendid bounty of what we have sown.
* poem of the writer, first appeared under a pseudonym in WHAT IS LOVE? (AN EXPERIMENTAL PROJECT) by Peter Lim, Judi Burstyner and Louis Kushinsky (Blurb, 2012).
Bionote
Peter Lim was born in the then Malaya but has lived in Australia for over two decades. He received his BA Hons in economics from the University of Malaya in 1963 and his PhD from the Institute of Social Studies, the Catholic University of Paris in 1974. He was the originator of a prose work WHAT IS LOVE ? (AN EXPERIMENTALPROJECT ) collaborated by Dr Judi Burstyner and Louis Kushinsky from Melbourne. In 2013 he founded The Melbourne Circle modelled after the Bloomsbury Circle of 20th century London. In the same year, he co-founded Australian & Asian Orchestra. Peter is a self-taught composer and his works had been performed in Melbourne, the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Serbia and soon (through Youtube) in Europe. Apart from writing and music, his other interests include literature, languages, neuro-science, psychology, sociology, economic policy, welfare and ethics. Peter regards himself as a humanist. He is married and has two grown-up sons.
The harvest is over this year
I wait for next year's summer
Nature fails in its promise
One season faithfully follows another.
Yet the bounty of my harvest
Is richer than any that nature can provide
In your loving heart shines the eternal green pasture
I need nothing more---all else I set aside.
Our love is the ripening
Of all that grows in this fertile land
Far away from the fever and fret of life
Upon luxuriant and faithful soil we stand.
Every seed of love we plant together
Will flower and grow to be ours alone
This is our pasture of endless beauty and joy
This is the most splendid bounty of what we have sown.
* poem of the writer, first appeared under a pseudonym in WHAT IS LOVE? (AN EXPERIMENTAL PROJECT) by Peter Lim, Judi Burstyner and Louis Kushinsky (Blurb, 2012).
Bionote
Peter Lim was born in the then Malaya but has lived in Australia for over two decades. He received his BA Hons in economics from the University of Malaya in 1963 and his PhD from the Institute of Social Studies, the Catholic University of Paris in 1974. He was the originator of a prose work WHAT IS LOVE ? (AN EXPERIMENTALPROJECT ) collaborated by Dr Judi Burstyner and Louis Kushinsky from Melbourne. In 2013 he founded The Melbourne Circle modelled after the Bloomsbury Circle of 20th century London. In the same year, he co-founded Australian & Asian Orchestra. Peter is a self-taught composer and his works had been performed in Melbourne, the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Serbia and soon (through Youtube) in Europe. Apart from writing and music, his other interests include literature, languages, neuro-science, psychology, sociology, economic policy, welfare and ethics. Peter regards himself as a humanist. He is married and has two grown-up sons.
1 Poem by Colton Adrian
Ears
In the middle
Where I’m at
a short road for motors
longer for legs
The cars come in groups
Clusters
from each direction, loud
and sharp
Piercing the wind.
A stoplight at both ends lets
The cars cross the middle.
In this middle
Where I’m at.
Some louder, younger cars
Booms from cracked speakers shake trees
Others old leaking, polluting
Black smoke.
There are flowers on both sides of the road,
White crosses.
Collisions, fires, traffic
Screaming.
Still sometimes when both stoplights
at both ends
are red for just a moment,
then in the middle
where I’m at,
gets real quiet
and I can hear the birds.
Bionote
Colton Adrian is twenty-one. He keeps the lights on for work and writes when he's not doing that. He escaped via C-section and was birthed in Williamsburg, Virginia. He’s been there ever since and has been plotting a breakout involving a pen and a pad for the last two years. This will be his first publication.
In the middle
Where I’m at
a short road for motors
longer for legs
The cars come in groups
Clusters
from each direction, loud
and sharp
Piercing the wind.
A stoplight at both ends lets
The cars cross the middle.
In this middle
Where I’m at.
Some louder, younger cars
Booms from cracked speakers shake trees
Others old leaking, polluting
Black smoke.
There are flowers on both sides of the road,
White crosses.
Collisions, fires, traffic
Screaming.
Still sometimes when both stoplights
at both ends
are red for just a moment,
then in the middle
where I’m at,
gets real quiet
and I can hear the birds.
Bionote
Colton Adrian is twenty-one. He keeps the lights on for work and writes when he's not doing that. He escaped via C-section and was birthed in Williamsburg, Virginia. He’s been there ever since and has been plotting a breakout involving a pen and a pad for the last two years. This will be his first publication.
1 Poem by Matthew Bernobich
Conversation
Conversation is a dance under the 3 o'clock moon.
Two heads of cattail bobbing in the wind.
The dust swirls, lazy,
And the clouds roll overhead.
Two strollers turn together,
Imbibing the waterfall fog.
The barn, a stranger to silence,
Wonders what its cows are thinking,
What the chickens dream about,
And who the horses fall in love with.
The crickets chirp their chorus to the
Bullfrog, whose gravelly thunder
Wages war with the peaceful monotony of the night.
The wolf howls in vain to the moon,
A dreamer.
Yet the stars shine on the stuttering billygoat,
Who bleats weak and uncertain prophecy
Atop a grassy knoll.
The night strains to carry his message,
And silence rivers through the air:
A silence that crushes brick walls and shatters mirrors dimly lit,
That orchestrates cosmic ripples with rustling leaves in the celestial Dance.
Bionote
Matthew Bernobich was born and raised in Connecticut, but he decided to expand his horizons by traveling across the country to attend Reed College in 2011 where he studies French Literature. His French education has taken him to Paris, France, and the Caribbean island Martinique. After graduation in May 2016, he hopes to become a high school foreign language teacher, starting with a two-year experience in Martinique teaching English with the Teaching Assistant Program in France (TAPIF).
While he has been writing poetry since the beginning of high school, it was only recently that he decided to publish his works for a wider audience. He has honed his craft and poetic vision thanks to the help of high school mentor Marissa Smith and exposure to mystical poets Rumi, Hafiz, and Saul Williams, among others. He has been published once before with the website The Artistic Muse.
Conversation is a dance under the 3 o'clock moon.
Two heads of cattail bobbing in the wind.
The dust swirls, lazy,
And the clouds roll overhead.
Two strollers turn together,
Imbibing the waterfall fog.
The barn, a stranger to silence,
Wonders what its cows are thinking,
What the chickens dream about,
And who the horses fall in love with.
The crickets chirp their chorus to the
Bullfrog, whose gravelly thunder
Wages war with the peaceful monotony of the night.
The wolf howls in vain to the moon,
A dreamer.
Yet the stars shine on the stuttering billygoat,
Who bleats weak and uncertain prophecy
Atop a grassy knoll.
The night strains to carry his message,
And silence rivers through the air:
A silence that crushes brick walls and shatters mirrors dimly lit,
That orchestrates cosmic ripples with rustling leaves in the celestial Dance.
Bionote
Matthew Bernobich was born and raised in Connecticut, but he decided to expand his horizons by traveling across the country to attend Reed College in 2011 where he studies French Literature. His French education has taken him to Paris, France, and the Caribbean island Martinique. After graduation in May 2016, he hopes to become a high school foreign language teacher, starting with a two-year experience in Martinique teaching English with the Teaching Assistant Program in France (TAPIF).
While he has been writing poetry since the beginning of high school, it was only recently that he decided to publish his works for a wider audience. He has honed his craft and poetic vision thanks to the help of high school mentor Marissa Smith and exposure to mystical poets Rumi, Hafiz, and Saul Williams, among others. He has been published once before with the website The Artistic Muse.
4 Poems by Emma Moughabghab
City in the East
At the center, upon the peak of the grey hill,
you hold the beating heart of the gyroscope;
it goes round and round and back again:
surrounded by fleeting shadows of multiple lives,
it melts in the summer heat in an iridescent simulation
of the shimmering lights and whispering voices of the city.
The rooster’s crow rises with the morning call to prayer,
incongruous among the waking sounds, slithering through the alleys,
it echoes in the winding ways between shouldered buildings;
bears upwards in a spiraling maze of plastered bricks,
through bending roofs, laden monuments and innumerable breaths.
As the city rises blanketed by the daring rays of the sun,
the rainbow canopy of skin and sound pours into the streets,
welling up in the morning vibe, it seeps into nooks and crannies,
trampling stone and tarmac to the beat of stirring life.
At the center, upon the peak of the grey hill,
you hold the beating heart of the gyroscope;
it goes round and round and back again:
surrounded by fleeting shadows of multiple lives,
it melts in the summer heat in an iridescent simulation
of the shimmering lights and whispering voices of the city.
The rooster’s crow rises with the morning call to prayer,
incongruous among the waking sounds, slithering through the alleys,
it echoes in the winding ways between shouldered buildings;
bears upwards in a spiraling maze of plastered bricks,
through bending roofs, laden monuments and innumerable breaths.
As the city rises blanketed by the daring rays of the sun,
the rainbow canopy of skin and sound pours into the streets,
welling up in the morning vibe, it seeps into nooks and crannies,
trampling stone and tarmac to the beat of stirring life.
God’s Backyard
They are lined up, their heads bowed, their hands bound,
muttering the right words to the wrong god
they fall asleep by the next shot;
blinded by humanoid reflections, by images of ghosts
splattered with blood from necks, from inviolable folds
bent and towed to Friday market.
Their crooked fingers forced toward unforgiving skies,
they are marched through lands that they once tilled—
they are branded with expunged initials.
Relegated to the unforgiving dirt and a paper sun
they wait for exploding water: Dead on Arrival.
Those who remain, extend molded hands beneath dirty linen
for sawdust crumbs and a pitying gaze,
contrived smiles and silence;
and the few who push off with nothing to take back,
they brush off, the doors behind them ajar,
rotting in the barren earth and smoke.
Swapped and swapped again they mutter the right words
to the wrong god until the next round
when they too fall asleep by the next shot.
And a few many years later,
tourist sandals trample cracked mosaics
beneath walls silenced of their bartered songs,
now relegated to the needs of a mightier good.
They are lined up, their heads bowed, their hands bound,
muttering the right words to the wrong god
they fall asleep by the next shot;
blinded by humanoid reflections, by images of ghosts
splattered with blood from necks, from inviolable folds
bent and towed to Friday market.
Their crooked fingers forced toward unforgiving skies,
they are marched through lands that they once tilled—
they are branded with expunged initials.
Relegated to the unforgiving dirt and a paper sun
they wait for exploding water: Dead on Arrival.
Those who remain, extend molded hands beneath dirty linen
for sawdust crumbs and a pitying gaze,
contrived smiles and silence;
and the few who push off with nothing to take back,
they brush off, the doors behind them ajar,
rotting in the barren earth and smoke.
Swapped and swapped again they mutter the right words
to the wrong god until the next round
when they too fall asleep by the next shot.
And a few many years later,
tourist sandals trample cracked mosaics
beneath walls silenced of their bartered songs,
now relegated to the needs of a mightier good.
How Not to Make it Through the Door
Words suspended in space around my eyes
are written in invisible ink that my mind colors blue.
The car won’t start and it’s far too dangerous to bike
but neither are the problem.
There’s always the front door with its steel handle,
steel frame and dead locks, all nine of them.
I could just make up sentences right here on the couch;
edit them, polish them, type them up and call it a day.
Yes, there’s hope—
The kind that is spurred by boredom and laziness.
Just enough of each to patch up a nice pair of curtains
to mask all the bars on all the windows, refract the light
upon request or snuff it out completely, also upon request.
I drool at reality on TV and attempt to shake my head loose
but slam it against the wall instead and see stars for my trouble.
I had tried screaming into a pillow, once, and it was quite enough
to understand that pillows are only sound proof in the movies.
Fruitless
We surf through swindled lives
where cats wear paper scarves
and dance for us in cancerous heat—
Like a humming-bird’s flight in the creeping sunshine,
we deliberate about the pope over our morning coffee
and take pride in lies hidden in vacuum,
when our tears would bathe, as rain,
the despised ocean.
Still, as our mouths bend in smiles
like tulips heavy with blossom,
we longingly whisper grains of dreams
of cherry trees that penetrate the snow,
of desert winds that hail in the Spring.
We surf through swindled lives
where cats wear paper scarves
and dance for us in cancerous heat—
Like a humming-bird’s flight in the creeping sunshine,
we deliberate about the pope over our morning coffee
and take pride in lies hidden in vacuum,
when our tears would bathe, as rain,
the despised ocean.
Still, as our mouths bend in smiles
like tulips heavy with blossom,
we longingly whisper grains of dreams
of cherry trees that penetrate the snow,
of desert winds that hail in the Spring.
Bionote
Emma Moughabghab is a Composition and Rhetoric Instructor as well as the Coordinator of the Writing Center at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. Her research focuses on interdisciplinary analyses of the visual arts and literature, the intersections between media and literary theory, mediation, and the networks of power in poststructuralist literature. Her academic work has appeared in Studies in the Humanities and her poetry is forthcoming in Rusted Radishes: The Beirut Literary and Art Journal where she serves on the editorial board. Her paintings have been exhibited at the UNESCO palace in Beirut, Lebanon.
Emma Moughabghab is a Composition and Rhetoric Instructor as well as the Coordinator of the Writing Center at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. Her research focuses on interdisciplinary analyses of the visual arts and literature, the intersections between media and literary theory, mediation, and the networks of power in poststructuralist literature. Her academic work has appeared in Studies in the Humanities and her poetry is forthcoming in Rusted Radishes: The Beirut Literary and Art Journal where she serves on the editorial board. Her paintings have been exhibited at the UNESCO palace in Beirut, Lebanon.
3 Poems by Becca Lamarre
dreamscape cornering sharp turns
I dreamt of killer whales
some sort of tsunami commanded
these beautiful beasts to me
black and white shadow against landscape
arcing to and fro swallowing
lineages up whole
there was a snake in the house
we chased it around like it was a grand game
I laughed through tears, “we have a snake problem!”
while you smacked at my hollow with the broom
next I was between an ageless couple
lovely one shared hot water whispers of her
husband’s promiscuity, of the deposits
he made into his secretary
all this while blaming me for
fluid slowly seeping from her shell
to follow I was gifted a white bible
blew smoke from the cover to bare
your name inscribed like a square hole in the sun
this vessel cradled inside a tone
both sound and shade that I can only
dream is the creation of the ghost
yesterday’s acts of expectance
with undertones of allegiance to allegory
iloveyouimissyou
under the bowery, outside the brick
red brick yonder o’
the strings of the heart
enter the rippling bouquet
very silently you
said once upon a time
like I love you but I cannot
it’s a lone spicket with
not a bucket to fill
us is a powerful notion
or maybe a concept yarn
hand spun into a curve
steadfast but much too soft
stitched into our thoughts eternal
imprinted upon our very cells
the cold and the wind blow
right through the flaw in my center
mine is not a wavering obsession
the dark and the light
aint it great
when the winter cold freezes
the squalid garden lurkers
and you don’t have to tiptoe no more
you don’t have to walk slow and creeplike
so as not to frighten the kids
aint it grand
when the ice encapsulates the grasses and trees
wraps ‘em up in wavered light
beauty peaks after all that wait
they were confident before but now
just thicket waiting to be discarded
irony oh irony
you hold hands with fate
you faithful playmates
skipping naughtily through daybreaks
and peering triumphant
at piles of pillowcases tattered
Bionote
Becca Lamarre grew up in a town in Indiana known for its many railroad crossings and the smell of its paper mills. She holds a MA in Higher Education and a BS in Psychology from Ball State University and her fascination with human behavior and motivations strongly influences her writing. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Uppagus and Indiana Voice Journal. She currently lives in Chicago with her family where she is at work on her first full-length collection.
I dreamt of killer whales
some sort of tsunami commanded
these beautiful beasts to me
black and white shadow against landscape
arcing to and fro swallowing
lineages up whole
there was a snake in the house
we chased it around like it was a grand game
I laughed through tears, “we have a snake problem!”
while you smacked at my hollow with the broom
next I was between an ageless couple
lovely one shared hot water whispers of her
husband’s promiscuity, of the deposits
he made into his secretary
all this while blaming me for
fluid slowly seeping from her shell
to follow I was gifted a white bible
blew smoke from the cover to bare
your name inscribed like a square hole in the sun
this vessel cradled inside a tone
both sound and shade that I can only
dream is the creation of the ghost
yesterday’s acts of expectance
with undertones of allegiance to allegory
iloveyouimissyou
under the bowery, outside the brick
red brick yonder o’
the strings of the heart
enter the rippling bouquet
very silently you
said once upon a time
like I love you but I cannot
it’s a lone spicket with
not a bucket to fill
us is a powerful notion
or maybe a concept yarn
hand spun into a curve
steadfast but much too soft
stitched into our thoughts eternal
imprinted upon our very cells
the cold and the wind blow
right through the flaw in my center
mine is not a wavering obsession
the dark and the light
aint it great
when the winter cold freezes
the squalid garden lurkers
and you don’t have to tiptoe no more
you don’t have to walk slow and creeplike
so as not to frighten the kids
aint it grand
when the ice encapsulates the grasses and trees
wraps ‘em up in wavered light
beauty peaks after all that wait
they were confident before but now
just thicket waiting to be discarded
irony oh irony
you hold hands with fate
you faithful playmates
skipping naughtily through daybreaks
and peering triumphant
at piles of pillowcases tattered
Bionote
Becca Lamarre grew up in a town in Indiana known for its many railroad crossings and the smell of its paper mills. She holds a MA in Higher Education and a BS in Psychology from Ball State University and her fascination with human behavior and motivations strongly influences her writing. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Uppagus and Indiana Voice Journal. She currently lives in Chicago with her family where she is at work on her first full-length collection.
2 Poems by Garrett Sly
Careless Thoughts
Many battles, I've won and lost
Picking myself up in fear of defeat
I have no choice but to stand alone
I trust myself but no one knew
What I thought as I sat alone
My body shakes as I grab the blade
Thinking of cause and effect
Not caring what comes next
A hand on my back, searching for faith
Do I have any left?
The answer to the question lingers in the air
With no answer in mind
I search further digging deep
I'm trying as hard as I can, I hope you know
I wish I had the answers, but so don't you
In the end, I look in the mirror at a small man and a coward.
Understandings
As if you knew what I've been through
Deep feelings and dark thoughts
They provoke me every night
I lay alone and stare at the ceiling
I never felt love and tenderness
My childhood was stolen
By an imaginary thief
My feelings I've held in, they scream, hoping you'll hear
A cry for help, a last resort of sorts
My last chance to set things straight
My last chance to clear my name
So many things, so little time
So many people and so many crimes
Helpless souls, going nowhere, the final destination
I feel as if I've tried my best
I hope you see how much I truly cared
I know I was never there
Let me repay you
But I've got nothing left
It was stolen.
Bionote
My name is Garrett. I'm 15. I'm an up and coming writer. I write poems, short stories and maybe a full length novel one day.
Many battles, I've won and lost
Picking myself up in fear of defeat
I have no choice but to stand alone
I trust myself but no one knew
What I thought as I sat alone
My body shakes as I grab the blade
Thinking of cause and effect
Not caring what comes next
A hand on my back, searching for faith
Do I have any left?
The answer to the question lingers in the air
With no answer in mind
I search further digging deep
I'm trying as hard as I can, I hope you know
I wish I had the answers, but so don't you
In the end, I look in the mirror at a small man and a coward.
Understandings
As if you knew what I've been through
Deep feelings and dark thoughts
They provoke me every night
I lay alone and stare at the ceiling
I never felt love and tenderness
My childhood was stolen
By an imaginary thief
My feelings I've held in, they scream, hoping you'll hear
A cry for help, a last resort of sorts
My last chance to set things straight
My last chance to clear my name
So many things, so little time
So many people and so many crimes
Helpless souls, going nowhere, the final destination
I feel as if I've tried my best
I hope you see how much I truly cared
I know I was never there
Let me repay you
But I've got nothing left
It was stolen.
Bionote
My name is Garrett. I'm 15. I'm an up and coming writer. I write poems, short stories and maybe a full length novel one day.
3 Poems by Nancy P. Davenport
poem for my big sister
it’s the time of
the year
I could follow you around,
find you
by peel, (by following your sweet smell)
grape cluster scaffoldings peach pits left on windowsills
a trail of cherry pits
the glove of a banana left on your dash,
an apple core
left in the
ash tray
old kitchen
Wednesday
while cleaning out
the right- hand
cupboard
in mom’s kitchen
the cloves & curry
spill
on the floor
making the room
smell Medieval
Tea-Bag Message
cleanliness is
next to
Godliness
says
the little square
attached to
my teabag
I clean my kitchen and feel Godly
but when I go back
to make
my bed
and smell him
on my sheets
I choose to be human
Bionote
My poems have appeared in BURNING GRAPE, BICYCLE REVIEW, HAIGHT-ASHBURY LITERARY JOURNAL, LILLIPUT REVIEW, BLUE FIFTH REVIEW, POETRY QUARTERLY, RED FEZ, among others. I've had poems published in anthologies, UNDER COVER, SPARRING WITH BEATNIK GHOSTS, and an upcoming feminist anthology, RETURN TO MAGO. My chapbook, LA BRIZNA, was published in May 2014.
it’s the time of
the year
I could follow you around,
find you
by peel, (by following your sweet smell)
grape cluster scaffoldings peach pits left on windowsills
a trail of cherry pits
the glove of a banana left on your dash,
an apple core
left in the
ash tray
old kitchen
Wednesday
while cleaning out
the right- hand
cupboard
in mom’s kitchen
the cloves & curry
spill
on the floor
making the room
smell Medieval
Tea-Bag Message
cleanliness is
next to
Godliness
says
the little square
attached to
my teabag
I clean my kitchen and feel Godly
but when I go back
to make
my bed
and smell him
on my sheets
I choose to be human
Bionote
My poems have appeared in BURNING GRAPE, BICYCLE REVIEW, HAIGHT-ASHBURY LITERARY JOURNAL, LILLIPUT REVIEW, BLUE FIFTH REVIEW, POETRY QUARTERLY, RED FEZ, among others. I've had poems published in anthologies, UNDER COVER, SPARRING WITH BEATNIK GHOSTS, and an upcoming feminist anthology, RETURN TO MAGO. My chapbook, LA BRIZNA, was published in May 2014.
2 Poems by Efren L. Cruzada
Solar
Sparrows broke their contract with the sun
And perched their blazing wings on a satellite panel.
Restless, these fiery children from our personal star
Departed from their makeshift nest
And shook the sky, crashing into the sea.
Meteoric, we felt their harsh landing through history,
Noticing their final streaks glimmer
In the atmosphere as we languorously glided
By the Hudson River, our fingers mingling like tongues.
A contract between these heavenly birds and our earth
(Turquoise orb shimmering in space like a glass marble)
Was consecrated when your rosy cheek lay on my shoulder,
A dove slain by a flock of arrows, pierced by a single kiss,
Dripping with the fire and blood of the setting sun.
City
I want to gather this city’s sorrows
And infuse your lungs with them.
We are caught up in this endless metropolis,
Hung up in pleasure and sleep.
Our journeys through glass and metal labyrinths
Make me yearn to soak your fibers with elegies.
You are more than this city of sad serenades.
I look at you and hear a dove cooing in the sewers.
You drone like a plane in our love’s dying breaths
And what vomits out of you are a mountain of cherries.
If I had loved you on grasslands, I would’ve brought my guitar
And sang the wind into your ear and a lamp would eternally burn in you.
But, as it is, a dagger sets ablaze the terrible hollows
Where a hundred ponies prance with their riders dead.
We can never swerve away from this traffic of idiot anguish.
Bionote
Efren L. Cruzada's work has appeared in The West 4th Street Review, Headless, and Songs of Eretz Poetry Review. Born in the Philippines and raised in Texas, Mr. Cruzada went on to study at New York University. He currently resides in Queens, New York.
Sparrows broke their contract with the sun
And perched their blazing wings on a satellite panel.
Restless, these fiery children from our personal star
Departed from their makeshift nest
And shook the sky, crashing into the sea.
Meteoric, we felt their harsh landing through history,
Noticing their final streaks glimmer
In the atmosphere as we languorously glided
By the Hudson River, our fingers mingling like tongues.
A contract between these heavenly birds and our earth
(Turquoise orb shimmering in space like a glass marble)
Was consecrated when your rosy cheek lay on my shoulder,
A dove slain by a flock of arrows, pierced by a single kiss,
Dripping with the fire and blood of the setting sun.
City
I want to gather this city’s sorrows
And infuse your lungs with them.
We are caught up in this endless metropolis,
Hung up in pleasure and sleep.
Our journeys through glass and metal labyrinths
Make me yearn to soak your fibers with elegies.
You are more than this city of sad serenades.
I look at you and hear a dove cooing in the sewers.
You drone like a plane in our love’s dying breaths
And what vomits out of you are a mountain of cherries.
If I had loved you on grasslands, I would’ve brought my guitar
And sang the wind into your ear and a lamp would eternally burn in you.
But, as it is, a dagger sets ablaze the terrible hollows
Where a hundred ponies prance with their riders dead.
We can never swerve away from this traffic of idiot anguish.
Bionote
Efren L. Cruzada's work has appeared in The West 4th Street Review, Headless, and Songs of Eretz Poetry Review. Born in the Philippines and raised in Texas, Mr. Cruzada went on to study at New York University. He currently resides in Queens, New York.
5 Poems by Steven Wittenberg Gordon
Morale Call
I was finally granted a “morale call”
on the iridium satellite phone.
Five Minutes Only.
Thank God my wife picked up.
It was so good to hear
her voice and let her know
I was all right.
Our daughter was hit in the face
by a swing. A bloody nose
resulted.
Our son was having problems
in school but was otherwise handling
my absence well.
She was planning a trip
to look at possible sites
for my future civilian practice.
But my future plans seemed distant,
mired as I was in the present.
She told she was proud
of me and that she loved me.
I love you. I miss you.
And then the call was over.
Sweeping Puddles Away
I spent much of the day,
As it rained over night,
Sweeping puddles away
Of mosquitoes that prey.
In controlling their blight
I spent much of the day.
Of the eggs that they lay
And their larva so white
Sweeping puddles away
Is what keeps them at bay.
So in this endless fight
I spent much of the day.
For my flight surgeon’s pay
My broom moved left and right
Sweeping puddles away
Lest mosquitoes would play
And then breed, bloom, and bite,
I spent much of the day
Sweeping puddles away.
Atlanta’s Triolet
If you believe that you should be
The one to share my marriage bed
Then race me through the forest free
If you believe that you should be
The one to spend your life with me
But lose and you shall lose your head
If you believe that you should be
The one to share my marriage bed
Chick Magnet
The Prince of Troy was offered powerful gifts from each goddess:
A silver diadem of wisdom from grey-eyed Athena,
A golden belt of virtue from the regal, jealous Hera,
A magic ebon bow from the virgin huntress Artemis.
However it was Aphrodite’s gift that the young prince chose--
A seemingly ordinary ring of the darkest lodestone
Suspended from a thong of ordinary braided leather.
Aphrodite placed her gift ‘round the neck of her champion,
And when the smooth stone settled against the prince’s naked breast,
Even proud Hera was forced to lay her jealousy aside
To admire the sudden radiant beauty of the youth.
Europa goddess moon
Frigid. Under the blanket. Of sea ice
The womb. Always quickens
A god in disguise
Penetrates. Deep. Beneath.
Life swimming.
Bionote
A poet, writer, physician, and gentleman songster, Steven Wittenberg Gordon, MD was raised in the dairy country of upstate New York. He received his BA from Amherst College and his MD from Albany Medical College, and then completed a family practice residency in Wisconsin. After practicing medicine for several years in various locations, he volunteered for service with the United States Air Force and had many memorable adventures as a flight surgeon. While on active duty, he played a small part in the military’s response to the tragic tsunami that struck Indonesia in 2004--“Morale Call” and “Sweeping Puddles Away” are part of a larger body of work that was inspired by that experience. Doctor Gordon resides in Kansas with his human family and a poorly trained Airedale terrier. He continues to maintain a modest concierge medical practice and keeps himself ready and available to perform physicals on military recruits when USMEPCOM calls upon him for aid. His poetry appears regularly in Scifaikuest, Eternal Haunted Summer, Asimov's, and, of course, Songs of Eretz. Doctor Gordon is a member of the Codex Writers' Group and the editor of Songs of Eretz Poetry Review. Visit him at www.eretzsongs.blogspot.com, follow him on Twitter @SongsofEretz, or email him at SWGordonMD@gmail.com.
I was finally granted a “morale call”
on the iridium satellite phone.
Five Minutes Only.
Thank God my wife picked up.
It was so good to hear
her voice and let her know
I was all right.
Our daughter was hit in the face
by a swing. A bloody nose
resulted.
Our son was having problems
in school but was otherwise handling
my absence well.
She was planning a trip
to look at possible sites
for my future civilian practice.
But my future plans seemed distant,
mired as I was in the present.
She told she was proud
of me and that she loved me.
I love you. I miss you.
And then the call was over.
Sweeping Puddles Away
I spent much of the day,
As it rained over night,
Sweeping puddles away
Of mosquitoes that prey.
In controlling their blight
I spent much of the day.
Of the eggs that they lay
And their larva so white
Sweeping puddles away
Is what keeps them at bay.
So in this endless fight
I spent much of the day.
For my flight surgeon’s pay
My broom moved left and right
Sweeping puddles away
Lest mosquitoes would play
And then breed, bloom, and bite,
I spent much of the day
Sweeping puddles away.
Atlanta’s Triolet
If you believe that you should be
The one to share my marriage bed
Then race me through the forest free
If you believe that you should be
The one to spend your life with me
But lose and you shall lose your head
If you believe that you should be
The one to share my marriage bed
Chick Magnet
The Prince of Troy was offered powerful gifts from each goddess:
A silver diadem of wisdom from grey-eyed Athena,
A golden belt of virtue from the regal, jealous Hera,
A magic ebon bow from the virgin huntress Artemis.
However it was Aphrodite’s gift that the young prince chose--
A seemingly ordinary ring of the darkest lodestone
Suspended from a thong of ordinary braided leather.
Aphrodite placed her gift ‘round the neck of her champion,
And when the smooth stone settled against the prince’s naked breast,
Even proud Hera was forced to lay her jealousy aside
To admire the sudden radiant beauty of the youth.
Europa goddess moon
Frigid. Under the blanket. Of sea ice
The womb. Always quickens
A god in disguise
Penetrates. Deep. Beneath.
Life swimming.
Bionote
A poet, writer, physician, and gentleman songster, Steven Wittenberg Gordon, MD was raised in the dairy country of upstate New York. He received his BA from Amherst College and his MD from Albany Medical College, and then completed a family practice residency in Wisconsin. After practicing medicine for several years in various locations, he volunteered for service with the United States Air Force and had many memorable adventures as a flight surgeon. While on active duty, he played a small part in the military’s response to the tragic tsunami that struck Indonesia in 2004--“Morale Call” and “Sweeping Puddles Away” are part of a larger body of work that was inspired by that experience. Doctor Gordon resides in Kansas with his human family and a poorly trained Airedale terrier. He continues to maintain a modest concierge medical practice and keeps himself ready and available to perform physicals on military recruits when USMEPCOM calls upon him for aid. His poetry appears regularly in Scifaikuest, Eternal Haunted Summer, Asimov's, and, of course, Songs of Eretz. Doctor Gordon is a member of the Codex Writers' Group and the editor of Songs of Eretz Poetry Review. Visit him at www.eretzsongs.blogspot.com, follow him on Twitter @SongsofEretz, or email him at SWGordonMD@gmail.com.
3 Poems by Chrystal Berche
The Sky
Cloud ribbons
Stretch
Jagged fingers
Of color
Rainbows
Bridge gaps
Between wispy strands
Starfall
Before the stars
Fell
there was harmony
now the moon
rises
to chaos
disorder
Fade out Slow
Fade out slowly
Flute song mingeling with restless drums
Fade out slowly
Wolf howl in dusky gray morning
Sound bleeds like colors in sunlight
Edges of memory crinkle
Fade out slowly
Bionote
Chrystal writes. Hard times, troubled times, the lives of her characters are never easy, but then what life is? The story is in the struggled, the journey, the triumphs and the falls. Sometimes she writes urban romance and sometimes its poetry and songs. When she isn’t writing she’s taking pictures, or curled up with a good book and a kitty on her lap.
Cloud ribbons
Stretch
Jagged fingers
Of color
Rainbows
Bridge gaps
Between wispy strands
Starfall
Before the stars
Fell
there was harmony
now the moon
rises
to chaos
disorder
Fade out Slow
Fade out slowly
Flute song mingeling with restless drums
Fade out slowly
Wolf howl in dusky gray morning
Sound bleeds like colors in sunlight
Edges of memory crinkle
Fade out slowly
Bionote
Chrystal writes. Hard times, troubled times, the lives of her characters are never easy, but then what life is? The story is in the struggled, the journey, the triumphs and the falls. Sometimes she writes urban romance and sometimes its poetry and songs. When she isn’t writing she’s taking pictures, or curled up with a good book and a kitty on her lap.
2 Poems by Colin Chao
The Fool
They come at you with
Saccharine apologies,
Serotonin supplements,
Scientifically accurate
Formulas that promise to
Make the
Pain go
Away.
You try to play the fool.
There was never a point in
Contesting them because they
Wouldn’t look at you unless you
Had a smile pasted on your face, they
Wouldn’t let you speak until you finished their
Concoction of chemical condolences, until they
Saw that you really had
Licked the
Platter
Clean.
They know you fool no one.
You stopped showing them where it
Hurt because you weren’t really sure what part of
Your body you should have pointed out first without
Adding hypochondriasis to your list of words that
They said, described you perfectly, as if
Knowing exactly how to incant the names of the
Monsters in your head would be all the magic you
Needed
To slay
Them.
So you stop being the fool.
They say they will always be there for you when the
Monsters come, but how can they dare to speak of
Fighting by your side, when you are the
Only one who can see the horrors that surround you—
You have always been the
Only one who’s been fighting this battle—
This battle that will never end unless you
Cast off your armor and
Walk
Far
Away.
They say you’re only fooling yourself.
You think they have broken their promises when
They in fact have been by your side at every single
Moment, trying to help you fight. They can’t see your
Monsters but they can see the shell that you
Reluctantly force your broken body into, and in their
Obsession to protect you they make your steel plates even
Tighter and smaller until it kills you just to breathe, but
At least, this way, the monsters will
Never
Hurt
You.
And you’ll always be the fool.
Tonight
You don't have to
Bother asking if
I'm coming home tonight.
I cared enough
To call you months in
Advance, don't mistake
My dial tone messages as
A sign that I wanted
To be alone.
You don't have to
Bother asking if
I'm missing you tonight.
I cared enough
To stay a little longer,
I even waited until you
Fell asleep, so you wouldn't
Hear the sound of the door
Closing behind me.
You don't have to
Bother asking if
I'm feeling sick tonight.
I cared enough
To finish my serving of
Pills, and when the beast
Within me hungered, I dutifully
Followed the doctor's orders and
Swallowed another handful.
You don't have to
Bother asking if
I'm leaving you tonight.
I cared enough
To show you my trail,
How it was always too
Narrow for us both to
Travel, and yet
You still bothered
Guess what?
You shouldn't have bothered
Don't you dare say you didn't
Don't you dare say you couldn't
Don't you dare
Worry if
I'm coming home tonight
I always have.
(In
Pieces.)
Bionote
Colin Chao was born with absurdly high levels of choler in their veins—or so their doctor said. However, Chao does not trust any doctors because doctors make too much money, and money is the root of a particularly revolting kind of evil. Since 2011, they have refused to seek scientifically recognized forms of treatment; they consider poetry to be the best form of therapy there is. You can view the results of Chao's regularly irregular sessions at http://nihil-invictus.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/.
They come at you with
Saccharine apologies,
Serotonin supplements,
Scientifically accurate
Formulas that promise to
Make the
Pain go
Away.
You try to play the fool.
There was never a point in
Contesting them because they
Wouldn’t look at you unless you
Had a smile pasted on your face, they
Wouldn’t let you speak until you finished their
Concoction of chemical condolences, until they
Saw that you really had
Licked the
Platter
Clean.
They know you fool no one.
You stopped showing them where it
Hurt because you weren’t really sure what part of
Your body you should have pointed out first without
Adding hypochondriasis to your list of words that
They said, described you perfectly, as if
Knowing exactly how to incant the names of the
Monsters in your head would be all the magic you
Needed
To slay
Them.
So you stop being the fool.
They say they will always be there for you when the
Monsters come, but how can they dare to speak of
Fighting by your side, when you are the
Only one who can see the horrors that surround you—
You have always been the
Only one who’s been fighting this battle—
This battle that will never end unless you
Cast off your armor and
Walk
Far
Away.
They say you’re only fooling yourself.
You think they have broken their promises when
They in fact have been by your side at every single
Moment, trying to help you fight. They can’t see your
Monsters but they can see the shell that you
Reluctantly force your broken body into, and in their
Obsession to protect you they make your steel plates even
Tighter and smaller until it kills you just to breathe, but
At least, this way, the monsters will
Never
Hurt
You.
And you’ll always be the fool.
Tonight
You don't have to
Bother asking if
I'm coming home tonight.
I cared enough
To call you months in
Advance, don't mistake
My dial tone messages as
A sign that I wanted
To be alone.
You don't have to
Bother asking if
I'm missing you tonight.
I cared enough
To stay a little longer,
I even waited until you
Fell asleep, so you wouldn't
Hear the sound of the door
Closing behind me.
You don't have to
Bother asking if
I'm feeling sick tonight.
I cared enough
To finish my serving of
Pills, and when the beast
Within me hungered, I dutifully
Followed the doctor's orders and
Swallowed another handful.
You don't have to
Bother asking if
I'm leaving you tonight.
I cared enough
To show you my trail,
How it was always too
Narrow for us both to
Travel, and yet
You still bothered
Guess what?
You shouldn't have bothered
Don't you dare say you didn't
Don't you dare say you couldn't
Don't you dare
Worry if
I'm coming home tonight
I always have.
(In
Pieces.)
Bionote
Colin Chao was born with absurdly high levels of choler in their veins—or so their doctor said. However, Chao does not trust any doctors because doctors make too much money, and money is the root of a particularly revolting kind of evil. Since 2011, they have refused to seek scientifically recognized forms of treatment; they consider poetry to be the best form of therapy there is. You can view the results of Chao's regularly irregular sessions at http://nihil-invictus.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/.
2 poems by Yuxing Xia
Angles
The angle between the sun’s rays
and a reflection of it is not well-defined
like how my face does not really flash
my life experiences to whoever looks at me.
Note: Falling is a reprint from Strong Verse.
Falling
Falling
snow
lands on its feet and
cuddles around
my coat
for warmth
just like
my
dead
cat.
Bionote
Yuxing Xia is a scientist by day, poet by daydream. His work has been published or is forthcoming from Strong Verse, Society of Classical Poets, Boston Literary Magazine, Otoliths, Pantheon Magazine, Star*line, Eunoia Review and elsewhere (see yuxingxia.wordpress.com). He also really likes boards that promote justice such as the washboard. Like really, all kinds of flat boards.
The angle between the sun’s rays
and a reflection of it is not well-defined
like how my face does not really flash
my life experiences to whoever looks at me.
Note: Falling is a reprint from Strong Verse.
Falling
Falling
snow
lands on its feet and
cuddles around
my coat
for warmth
just like
my
dead
cat.
Bionote
Yuxing Xia is a scientist by day, poet by daydream. His work has been published or is forthcoming from Strong Verse, Society of Classical Poets, Boston Literary Magazine, Otoliths, Pantheon Magazine, Star*line, Eunoia Review and elsewhere (see yuxingxia.wordpress.com). He also really likes boards that promote justice such as the washboard. Like really, all kinds of flat boards.
5 Tanka by an'ya
cold cemetery: Most Overall Votes Tanka Splendor Contest
floods and bridges: 7th International Tanka Festival Competition the Japan Tanka Poets' Society
old memories: First place tanka Society of America Contest
rose moon: Tanka Splendor Contest
distant whitecaps: published in Tanka tree rings
Bionote
an'ya is known worldwide for writing Japanese short forms and her works have been translated into over 60 different languages. She has won many competitions, been published various places and has numerous published books to her credit. Currently an'ya is the editor for cattails collected works of the United haiku and Tanka Society and keeps her own publication "midnight moon" which can be viewed at anyaonline.us
old memories: First place tanka Society of America Contest
an'ya is known worldwide for writing Japanese short forms and her works have been translated into over 60 different languages. She has won many competitions, been published various places and has numerous published books to her credit. Currently an'ya is the editor for cattails collected works of the United haiku and Tanka Society and keeps her own publication "midnight moon" which can be viewed at anyaonline.us
1 Poem by Paul Doty
The Clarity of the Table
A January thaw flying like a foraging snowy owl and throws a late morning sun into the kitchen illuminating the ducks eggs in a Syracuse china bowl in a scoured white iron sink. “We'll put everything on the table, and then find clarity.” A Dutch painting, game birds piled high on a table with a pewter pitcher and two rabbits hung from a peg the wall behind, the painting's precision appetite compressed into food snared on the canvas. The Dutch knew the clarity of the table in a meaningful still life and to live life with that invested attention takes duck, goat, lamb, licorice, bay leaves, mutton, chicken, pickled things and a just butchered roast. Clarity is a cool larder with crockery, things tied with string, dried herbs, brine in jars, and metal lids screwed tightly to the upturned glass jar fish faces. Finding clarity is work bringing art in blue cheese stuffed hamburgers, olive oil painted across the palette in the pizza dish, and a letter written home about the food, the way food used to be reported in The New York Times, when the Times understood that clarity was the providence of the kitchen, and sated contradictory absolution was a place at the table.
Bionote
Paul Doty is a Public Service Librarian at St. Lawrence University. Paul has published essays or poems in publications such as the Reference Librarian, the Leaflet, Mississippi Review, Stone Canoe, Cortland Review, and Rootdrinker. He resides in Canton, New York, with his wife and youngest daughter, a house full of books, and a garage full of canoes.
A January thaw flying like a foraging snowy owl and throws a late morning sun into the kitchen illuminating the ducks eggs in a Syracuse china bowl in a scoured white iron sink. “We'll put everything on the table, and then find clarity.” A Dutch painting, game birds piled high on a table with a pewter pitcher and two rabbits hung from a peg the wall behind, the painting's precision appetite compressed into food snared on the canvas. The Dutch knew the clarity of the table in a meaningful still life and to live life with that invested attention takes duck, goat, lamb, licorice, bay leaves, mutton, chicken, pickled things and a just butchered roast. Clarity is a cool larder with crockery, things tied with string, dried herbs, brine in jars, and metal lids screwed tightly to the upturned glass jar fish faces. Finding clarity is work bringing art in blue cheese stuffed hamburgers, olive oil painted across the palette in the pizza dish, and a letter written home about the food, the way food used to be reported in The New York Times, when the Times understood that clarity was the providence of the kitchen, and sated contradictory absolution was a place at the table.
Bionote
Paul Doty is a Public Service Librarian at St. Lawrence University. Paul has published essays or poems in publications such as the Reference Librarian, the Leaflet, Mississippi Review, Stone Canoe, Cortland Review, and Rootdrinker. He resides in Canton, New York, with his wife and youngest daughter, a house full of books, and a garage full of canoes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)