Carcinogenic Poetry

Christopher Barnes - Two Poems

2012-01-26T17:01:00.000-06:00

Prom Night

So long as photons
Illuminate the eye
We’re madcap and gazeless
At the deliverance of optic concussion.

An electrocuted cageling
Everyman or ogre
Trickling red-handed snot
On an unblamable shirt.

Joan Rivers

Rib-ticklers are concussion bombs
In your execution, and edgy time since
You riddled make-up into laughter lines.
A schnozzle like yours
Is retraced by scalpels.

Those audacious Ps and Qs, snapping inputs,
Babel and explicit camp note
Striking terror into skullcaps
Of Borsch Belt men.

Pricedrop gold, animal rights,
Prowess with scripts (fuck!)
B.A. in Eng. Lit.,
Feverishly side-splitting,
The sourest apple in Brooklyn.

Christopher Barnes is an awarded writer, poet and artist from the UK. His collection Lovebites was published by Chanticleer Press in 2005, and his work has appeared in Poetry Scotland and Jacket Magazine.

Holly Day - One Poem

2012-01-26T06:56:00.001-06:00

The Footsteps Overhead

at night
the thud of the dishwasher upstairs
sounds like voices. I crank
the baby monitor
way up, listen for monsters
in my daughter's room.

sometimes
I hear something on the back porch
behind my head
can almost see
the deranged face pressed up against the glass
hands ready to smash through
I won't turn around.

Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis,Minnesota. Her poetry has recently appeared in Hawai'i Pacific Review, The Oxford American, and Slipstream. Her book publications include Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar-All-in-One for Dummies, and Music Theory for Dummies, which has recently been translated into French, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese.

Hal O'Leary - Two Poems

2012-01-25T11:44:00.004-06:00

The Innocent

I’m in my grave unsure of why I died.
For liberty and freedom it was not.
I didn’t know the leadership had lied.
I trusted, never knowing why we fought.

For liberty and freedom it was not.
I didn’t know they profited the most.
I trusted, never knowing why we fought.
That’s why, for now and ever, I’m a ghost.

I didn’t know they profited the most,
The psychopaths, that lied us into war.
That’s why, for now and ever, I’m a ghost.
Our sacred land’s not sacred anymore.

The psychopaths, that lied us into war.
They sold my life to satisfy their greed?
Our sacred land’s not sacred anymore.
Could I have died for such an evil deed?

They sold my life to satisfy their greed?
I didn’t know the leadership had lied.
Could I have died for such an evil deed?
I’m in my grave not knowing why I died.

War Is Hell

Yes, War Is Hell, that’s what they say,
But when it comes, it’s all HOORAY!
The flag, of course, is on display,
As patriots all kneel and pray.
“The enemy must die today”.
But who is this foe anyway,
We send our brave boys out to slay?
‘Thou shalt not kill’ commandments say,
But they’re not human, it’s OK.
Beside they come from far away
And worship God another day.

But who am I to question they
Who do what I did yesterday?
For very much to my dismay,
Back then I hid my feet of clay,
And off to Nam, I joined the fray,
To fight for, Good Old USA.
But now, for ignorance I pay,
And here in Arlington they lay
A wreath and rue the day
We bought the lie of Tonkin Bay

Hal O'Leary is an eighty-six-year-old Secular Humanist who believes that it is only through the arts that one is afforded an occasional glimpse into the otherwise incomprehensible.

Kevin McCoy - Two Poems

2012-01-18T09:01:00.000-06:00

Cape May 1975

cold fingers search for land in every heavy wet breath of tide & foam

crisp & salted is the sea in my mouth & nose

i long for breath & breeze & sand & sky

to finally touch bottom

& i burst from the ocean into day

i am radiant – pure – reborn & i return to the towel

the sun shakes its rays & i understand the glorious contradictions

of the being seeking rest

i feel sadness like an old man left alone

i sense the last burn of youth on my thin frame

i realize this moment before the waves return

what is out there? beyond the water? beyond the ships?

beyond the smallest smudge my straining

eyes can form?

my father replies –

the rest of the world

Lincolnway Cheyenne

The stop light on Lincolnway relishes in a pregnant pause

Its beacon sometimes yellow sometimes red

Warning the cowboy that the bars are closed and the streets now belong

to the uncaring frozen breath

He inhales the heat and the cold

And blows smoke to the dipping street light and turns up his collar

His eyes absorb the night

The cowboy counts his cigarettes

And changes color with the stop light

There ain’t no use stalling this any longer

He vanishes behind the white curtain

Kevin McCoy's work has previously appeared in pif, Prick of the Spindle, Burning Word and Harpur Palate.

James Valvis - One Poem

2012-01-17T22:40:00.002-06:00

Weapons of Greater Destruction

While we are concerned with weapons

Of mass destruction, let us remember

Also the weapons of greater destruction:

The lie, the slander, the knife in the back,

The horror of a child's blackened eyes

At the hands of his father, not to mention

Simple avarice, gluttony, pride, jealousy,

The strange, arrogant belief that we alone

Know the Mind of God, all the deadly sins

Of which we are human, inhuman bombs,

Aimed at each other, pointed at ourselves,

In our homes, at our work, in our countries.

I have a feeling that, if only we could

Cure ourselves of the weapons of greater

Destruction, all the other weapons

Would take care of themselves, though,

Even with the air yellow with nerve gas,

The small pox virus, and nuclear radiation,

You see I am not holding my breath.

James Valvis is the author of HOW TO SAY GOODBYE (Aortic Books, 2011). He has published hundreds of poems in places like Anderbo, Arts & Letters, New York Quarterly, Poetry East, River Styx, and Verse Daily. He lives in Issaquah, Washington.

Robert P. Hansen - Three Poems

2012-01-10T08:15:00.000-06:00

Carrot Top

You dangle like a carrot on a string
that’s held before a most reluctant mule
whose stubbornness is like a solid thing
resisting everything beyond the tool.
I buckle like an addict much in need
whenever I go strolling up to you,
and then I follow where you choose to lead
as if there’s nothing else I’d rather do.
You seem to have me firmly in your grasp
(a grasp I never did intend to fill)
and, now, I find my heart is softly cast
(a heart that never, ever learned to yield).
So, like the farmer leading stubborn mule,
you’ve coaxed me into chasing after you.

Left to Right from Me Read

seems it sure I’m odd how
English in backward me read to
Hebrew read you unless
course of
fate of twist simple a but with
natural perfectly be would this
read to
instead of this

Fundamentalism

They claim to know the truth but lie:
It isn't possible. So why
do they insist on forcing oth-
ers to agree? I wish they'd both-
er someone else. They knock on my

front door with pamphlets claiming Christ
has saved us all. My sins are mine,
not Christ's, regardless of the truth
they claim to know.

If Jesus lived today, they'd try
converting him. But he'd deny
intolerance with every breath
he took. Forgiveness comes, not wrath.
These truths are lost amid the lies
they claim to know.

Robert P. Hansen currently teaches philosophy and ethics at a community college. He has had over 40 poems and a dozen short stories published.

Jim Davis - Four Poems

2012-01-07T13:53:00.003-06:00

Abraham

I am peace unwilling.

I am coconut colored sky & the newly blasphemed.

There’s a bull mastiff sniffing the tailor’s trousers

at the crotch as he penetrates repeatedly, connecting

seams, up & down, up & down till reams of thread

have been lost to the pedal. SJ spoke of the boxer’s

open jaw, the loose mandible hatchet

that hung in victory like a slow flag, like the hard flag

of patriots, those devoted to the revolution. The revolution

has been drawn in sand by the river, by the found rib

of a field-dressed doe: the inspiration of all tainted lakewater.

Back at the cabin, the legend is sewn

in a pillow for the lounge. Out here, people will breathe

whatever air is sweetest. A sleeve of rawhide, a pig’s ear

with tiny prickled hairs, standing in the crisp air

of freshwater tarn, stocked with good-eatin’ pike,

pickled in a smokehouse on a shelf of jars.

Some men mark their progress by what they have overcome.

Abraham, whose willing knife poses at the throat of his son.

Jawbone utensil, liberated, to saw down birches for a blind.

For the hunter, any sacrifice is fine.

Destruction of Another City

This time I am not concerned: I write with a knife

in lieu of pen, now & then

with toothpicks & shards of broken glass, green

from a bottle, white disturbance, dragged across the sidewalk, over the brick

of Harold’s Chicken – red raised messages on skin –

before Betty, Harold’s wife, comes screaming

down the alley with a broom above her head, & that crazy look

that says, don’t forget

my name. Winter is citrus season

y si quieres naranjas, naranjas estan tres dolares por una bolsa a la Carniceria

where breakfast is cheap & easy. I see half of a man

underneath a station wagon on blocks – well, I guess I see

the half of man not underneath, rough blue work-

pants, Dr. Martin’s knockoffs: one flat in the gravel,

one pressed against the way. There’s a road map

hanging from his throat by a chain,

and there’s the ditch digger again, sorting a pile of bricks,

moving them, I assume, so that he might dig a ditch.

There’s Jasmine in the tea. And honeysuckle in the breath of a girl

whose lips I have sewn together. And milk. And the sky is falling

in prisons of crystal: no two pokes are alike.

The sky splinters louder at night. The sound of mother tiger breathing,

dreams played out in the language of natives

holding torches to her face, singing whiskers

o’er & o’er again

until the bricks fall on the man sleeping in the ditch, where free men go to sleep.

Still Life with Basket of Apples

Anything can kill, if pushed hard enough.

The butter knife, in so doing, has never been more alive.

It slides smoothly through the creamy woolen neck

of the crouching lamb. There is something in the air

that vibrates when we speak of it, so simple

as a lamp, flowers in a vase, a split hog hanging.

There is no surprise in its lack of motion,

by now, we expect as much. Less even.

But a simple ecstasy exists in the moment

when sincere observation meets voyeurism.

Though to admit that this is all we ever wanted

sounds final, apocalyptic even. By modern standards

there is ash everywhere: in the pattern of a bundled apron,

on the green pitcher, dusting the candle’s flame,

and a thin layer on the clock without hands.

All of this, splayed naked on a table.

We forget that life continues in the background:

a sensible bureau with many drawers, and on it

a sprinkle of coins, a stack of white envelopes,

and hung firmly on the wall, the window

to a still life with basket of apples.

Outside, prints in the snow on the lawn.

The Advantage of Using Weapons

In the pasture, a boy hangs upside down

from an oak-limb, shaking acorns to see the world.

On paper its fury is striking. When do you

put the pen down and get serious? The pen is fire.

I am no more human than fire is split logs,

is crackling leaves, dried pinecones spitting flame.

I too am warm. I am balanced and ready.

Within the strike, the river bends the forest.

The trees are firm, pliable and I am able

to see far and near in a glace. Be aware

of the pine-fists dropping. Get a little loose, enjoy

the show. You drape a blanket across my knees.

Again with the oak trees. Leave the cabin

and walk among them, understand

that arriving on time is secondary

to depth of movement, to quality of interaction.

Where have the children gone. You ask me

to bathe with the wind whistling through a window crack

that should have been patched years ago.

They were eating in the kitchen when I left them.

Check your mind’s eye: the children in the pasture,

upside down, chewing acorns and drinking the river

from a different angle than the one we taught.

Jim Davis is a graduate of Knox College and now lives, writes, and paints in Chicago. Jim edits the North Chicago Review, and his work has appeared in After Hours, Blue Mesa Review, Poetry Quarterly, Whitefish Review, Chiron Review, and Contemporary American Voices, among others. In 2011, Jim saw two of his poems receive Editor’s Choice Awards, and he will see two of his collections go to print in 2012: Work (unbound content) and Translations (Mi-te Press) www.jimdavispoetry.com.

Ivan Jenson - Three Poems

2012-01-04T08:26:00.000-06:00

My Unfair Lady

First you strand me
in Park Avenue
paradise
then you send
out a search party
to find me
quench my thirst
with cocktails
and usher me back
to your civilized
gathering
where I am treated
like a savant savage
to be watched
carefully so that
I don’t escape
or commit a
faux pas
over
Foie Gras
which would
be simply
unacceptable
as gorging on
mixed nuts
in mixed company
and so
I stay silent like
the Tramp
as my mood drops
so low
around the
plucked and tweezed
high brows
of society

Me Time

I am getting to the
bottom
of how to
get to the top
and I am on the cusp
of a major breakthrough
on how to shatter
the record held
by yours truly
the number one
fan of the man
known as
me
and you too
could be a
gold member
of that exclusive club
of you
a place where
you can feel
accepted
and lounge
around
in a house
of mirrors
filled with
Post-it
affirmations
which say
hurry up
already
and love yourself
so that you can
love someone else

Direction Home

One day
an apple a day
will not keep the
doctor away
and you will
be hit with
one final
bill of health
and your heart
will murmur
“I am broken”
and your bones
will creak, “I am brittle”
and your eyes
will focus on
a blurry prescription
designed to
prolong
the inevitable
and you will just
skip that dose
but before
life becomes
a pain in the butt
try to find meaning
in the map-quest
you are on

Ivan Jenson’s Absolut Jenson painting was featured in Art News, Art in America, and Interview magazine. His art has sold at Christie’s, New York. His poems have appeared in Word Riot, Zygote in my Coffee, Camroc Press Review, Haggard and Halo, Poetry Super Highway, Mad Swirl, Alternative Reel Poets Corner, Underground Voices Magazine, Blazevox, and many other magazines, online and in print. Dead Artist, a novel by Ivan Jenson is available at Amazon.com in paperback and as an eBook for the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes & Noble Nook, and on Google's eBookStore.

Stephanie Smith - One Poem

2012-01-03T07:09:00.004-06:00

The Reputations of Kings

These are the days we destroy
the reputations of kings
and leave the queens
battered and slumped
over the couch in the living room

These are the days we grow hungry
for the skins of our forefathers
Cannibalization cannot sate
the gnawing hunger
that pains our insides
The past is a puzzle box,
a great labyrinth,
a nightmare concert in the center of chaos
playing out of tune
It is a tired lung
trying to breathe,
heaving,
gasping for that very sustenance
it gave up centuries ago

Stephanie Smith is a poet and writer from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in such publications as PIF MAGAZINE, DECOMP, EVERYDAY POETS, THE HORROR ZINE, and BLUESTEM. My first poetry chapbook, DREAMS OF DALI, is available from Flutter Press.

Changming Yuan - Four Poems

2012-01-01T10:28:00.002-06:00

Epilogues
Just as both God and Devil are man’s incarnation, so are Heaven and Hell both man’s construction.

I
From the front yard of a melodious morning
From the busy road of a sweet Saturday
From the moist corner of a heavy march
From the back lane of pale winter
We have come, here and now, all gathering
In big crowds gathering in big crowds
Gathering in ever-bigger crowds gathering
For the boat to cross the wide wild waters
Before the fairy ferry is fated to fall
Under our feet too heavy with earthy mud

II
You may well hate Charon
But you cannot help feeling envious:
That business of carrying the diseased
Across the River Styx is ever so prosperous
The only monopoly in the entire universe
That has a market share
Larger than the market itself
Daydreaming, on this side
Of the river, how you might wish
To be an entrepreneur like him
A success American dreamer

III
Flying between sea and sky
Between day and night
Amid heavenly or oceanic blue
I lost all my references
To any timed space
Or a localized time
Except the non-stop snorting
Of a stranger neighbor

Then, beyond the snorts rising here
And more looming there
I see tigers, lions, leopards
And other kinds of hunger-throated predators
Darting out of every passenger’s heart
Running amuck around us
As if released from a huge cage
As if in a dreamland

Politics vs Poetics: A Zeugmatic Sketch of America

Every time you stage a play or an election in your own yard
You cannot wait to shake hands with your audiences and their wealth
No matter whether it is the passage of a new bill or an old dilemma
You excel particularly at manipulating public will and private property

With your weeping eyes and hands
You keep waging war and peace far beyond your boundaries
While you kill non-Americans and their hope together
To turn all others and othernesses into biblical dust

More often than not, you selfish intentions prove
Much more destructive than your smart bombs
You invisible fighter jets strike far farther
Than your visible arms of peace effort

You are simply too great for a small criticism
Too super-powerful for a weak opposition
Too democratic for a totalitarian competition
And too single-minded for a double standard

Americans Advertising America: Free Verse Found on I-39

MADISON GUNS 533-0320
EXIT 149 MIGDNIGHT SPECIAL
$TRIPPERS EXIT
“NEED WE SAY MORE” NOW
TRUCKERS WELCOME LEFT 2BLKS
MC SUPER SIZED

Face & Mask: A Politically Puzzling Poem

- Masks are the only garment that never goes out of fashion.

Your masks
Are
All
So much
Like
Real faces

That

Nobody
Can tell
If
Your face
Is
Or
Is not
A mask

Changming Yuan, author of Chansons of a Chinaman and 4-time Pushcart nominee, grew up in rural China and published several monographs before moving to North America. Currently, Yuan teaches in Vancouver and has had poetry appearing in 420 literary publications across 18 countries, including Asia Literary Review, Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Carcinogenic Poetry, London Magazine, Poetry Kanto and Poetry Salzburg Review.

Carcinogenic Poetry Update: December 2011

2011-12-27T13:24:00.003-06:00

Carcinogenic Poetry will resume publication on January 1, 2012. Thanks for those who have continued to submit your work and thanks to all for your continued support of our publication. Thanks for making 2011 a successful and poetically bountiful year! The second annual Carcinogenic Poetry print anthology will be out shortly, so stay tuned! Our anthologies combine all the talent of the past year into one volume; these volumes include several well-known and new authors of the literary independent and underground. If you haven’t gotten your copy of the Carcinogenic Poetry Anthology Vol. 1, rush over and get it now!

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/carcinogenic-poetry-anthology/15147910

We hope your holidays have been warm and your new year looks bright!

Donal Mahoney - One Poem

2011-11-29T20:33:00.002-06:00

People Who Live Above Stores

It's two in the morning
and people who live above stores
have sprung from their beds
this cold winter night.
They're leaning out of their windows
and bellowing into the street

at the deaf baker who launched the alarm
in the Rogers Park Donut Shoppe.
It's been ringing for hours
and the police haven't come.
Not even the firemen.
The donuts will never get done

and it appears now that
people who live above stores
will remain in a rage
leaning out of their windows
waving cigarettes like strobes
and bellowing the rest of the night.

Donal Mahoney has had poems published in Carcinogenic Poetry and other publications in the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Ben Adams - Two Poems

2011-11-28T16:20:00.000-06:00

Roman Sky

Youth is an empire braced
against the invasion of years.

In summer heat
speed-limits shimmer
on the roadside,
yellow outposts of control
ignored
by the rush of passing cars.

We drive towards
our proving ground.

There, waves sound
in the distance, while scorched leaves
are whipped from the dirt
by oven gusts of thick, dry air
& stone cottage walls are
frontier ruins, baking in the sun.

Through long afternoons
we gulp falernian wine
and send word back from the edge:
there is nothing out here, nothing left
to defend...

except an idea. This empire braced
against the invasion of years

and the sky above
like Rome itself,
a canvas of splendid
familiarity hung
above the burning wind.

Dead Piano Keys

Wishing to rid myself
of all the
useless
accumulated things
the baggage
and the burden,
the papers & bottles
the broken key chains
and tattered envelopes that once held letters
long misplaced

I think of all
the sayings
the scripture
and the spiritual tracts:
the life of the soul is not made
of earthly material
and hell,
even in the realms of art
losing those early manuscripts
in that left-behind suitcase
was the best thing that ever happened
to Hemingway.

But wishing to rid myself
I cannot

and the proof that life once happened
here

floats around
like bottles on the tide

filled with dead piano keys
snapped ends of
violin string and flowers
pressed & petrified
that once smelt of something young
& alive.

Writer, arts graduate in History and English, voicer of opinions both sophical AND philosophical, Ben Adams has recently worked as South Australian ambassador for National Young Writers Month and hails from the state capital of Adelaide. His poems have been published in Australian Reader, Gloom Cupboard and Clutching at Straws.

John Grey - Two Poems

2011-11-26T08:25:00.000-06:00

Breakdown

You finally broke down
and called in the tree cutters.
You hated to see that oak go
but it was as dead as the old man,
and the same age roughly,
ninety years, as when he’d had enough
and the tree cutters finally axed
his bony frame for good.

You stood out in the backyard
with that chopped-up corpse,
examined the rings,
could count to eighty distinct ones,
the boyhood circles blurred
like a man’s memory,
but all the adult spheres
clear as if you were reading in a diary:
the painful thinness of some years,
the gorged-on plenty of others.

The workmen tossed the timber
in the back of a truck,
oblivious to you or your father,
or even the thirty years or so you’d lived
in the shadow of that mighty tree.
They were like the grave-diggers
or the red-haired woman who brought the flowers
to the funeral home.
You have to break down
if you want to get them in.

Factory Town

Kind of them
to make the air for me.
The stuff the trees,
the plants, the grass produce
would never do.
Almost gracious in the way
their chimneys
spew out more gray soot
than my lungs would ever need.
Even at night,
when the factories
seem like graveyards,
they're still considerate enough
to keep those smoke stacks pumping,
a warm red glow even in winter,
and in summer,
a steady string of toxic clouds,
thicker than humidity.
How do they survive, I wonder,
in the outer suburbs,
in the countryside,
where air is so innocuous,
and doesn't foam,
doesn't lather the throat, the nostrils.
How do you know it's air
unless you cough along
in rhythm to your breathing,
unless somebody tells you
that's the price of doing business,
unless you realize
how much you pay that price.

Australian born poet, John Grey works as financial systems analyst. Recently published in Poem, Caveat Lector, Prism International and the horror anthology, “What Fear Becomes” with work upcoming in Big Muddy, Prism International and Writer’s Journal.

Cornelius Fortune - One Poem

2011-11-25T20:23:00.002-06:00

Slate

When the rain starts,
the world goes
from instant replay
to 1920s fast frame,
populated with people
trying to avoid the devilish downpour,

I can hear a rag time melody
drowned in the congested
nonsense of nonentities…
human colonies devoured
by the latest apps,
consuming raw GPS
coordinates to guide them
through the next set
of alerts and push notifications

atonality, a caressing, careening soundtrack
soaked in symphonic afterthoughts,
culled from bass boost long division
and umbrella eighth note patterns,
drummed above cars,
bus stops and ATM kiosks,
glowing like lost parcels in
transit

visibility slips surreptitiously
through the exit leaving a gloriously
wet crystal ball; liquid scribbles
dance across the foggy
headlights of cars, and in so doing,
slate makes me anonymous:
I could be a murderer,
or a gardener praising the rain

I could be a hologram
coughed up from the
gutters, collected in the
imagination of the debased,
a coaxial designate made
flesh

when the world goes
monochrome and I blink my eyes,
I understand what it means to be
a shade of noir slipping through
the cracks, framed within a
repurposed silhouette, pulsating
to the gray-washed visuals
blotted out by the amputated sun

A native Detroiter, Cornelius Fortune's work has appeared in Metro Times, the Advocate, Chess Life, Yahoo News, Carcinogenic Poetry, Tales of the Unanticipated, Illumen and others. Visit his website at www.corneliusfortune.com.

John Tustin - One Poem

2011-11-23T23:55:00.001-06:00

Burnt at the Edges

Drinking alone in my basement room,

Burping up the remnants of Friday’s spaghetti in butter sauce,

And you’re twenty miles away,
Getting fingerfucked by someone who doesn’t have
My subtlety, my passion,
Or my love for you.

Or my arrogance.

I wish I was young,
Young and green and blue and thin again,
Vomiting from the second floor window
Into the dumpster below
And dreaming the same dreams I dream now,
Only without the tinge of hopelessness,
The twinkles of regret, burnt at the edges.

I was once so young and thin and oblivious,
Almost pretty (except for the nose).
The days became years and I decayed, I rusted,
I sat pliant in sparsely furnished rooms,
A statue before the television and the stereo,
Surrounded by unpainted walls, empty containers,
Alone, always alone.

The kids didn’t call again tonight.
Sheba didn’t call.
Jessica didn’t call.
You don’t even have my number.

I stare vacant into a single bare light bulb,
My eyes burning and desperate,
And pray that you are truly loved
By someone that deserves you,

Like I don’t.

John Tustin is the divorced father of two perfect children. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry is his link.

Ben Burr - Two Poems

2011-11-20T20:17:00.000-06:00

Untitled #93

psychedelic nightmares
of the underground
fill my fevered head
with visions of god
a god with voices
in every color, singing
with words archaic
speaking of the evil
of the lighted mouth
as the talk turns
the signs disappear
into the broken valley
leaving the nude
to find their way

Kick the Devil

my hands shake
my mouth is dry
and it's only been
ten hours since the last fix
cold turkey should be reserved
for late November
not a way to kick
under the Tennessee sun
inside this aching body
lies a calm mind
and a pure heart
I will do this
I must do this
not for me
for you
for us
for that tiny house
on the corner
with the grand front porch
and tiny little windows
that will fill
with tiny little faces
one day
one day when this junk
this is all behind us

Ben Burr is a writer from East Nashville, Tennessee. His second book, The Nashville Poems, was released in 2011.

Andrew J. Stone - One Poem

2011-11-18T13:15:00.000-06:00

In Oz

Westside Witch,
walk in line
down yellow brick,
up emerald hills,
conjure pathlight, you
egomaniac-Dorothy-machine
gobbling children’s shoes.

Andrew J. Stone lives and writes under a thick cloud of LA smog. These conditions either have everything or nothing to do with the fact that he is almost finished with an ekphrastic chap. If you don't believe him, investigate his every post at his blog: http://andrewjstone.blogspot.com/

Sonnet Mondal - Two Poems

2011-11-18T11:11:00.000-06:00

My Chained Faith

The far-flung whistle of the colliery
and of the Calcutta-mail
calls me every day after dinner.

The train’s shrill echo and
rhythmic melody of wheels
form a sublime image of
the girl out of my dreams,
waving and smiling;
screaming and crying;
standing and waiting
just for me amidst gasses,
trees and hedges that wave
in solitude and hope.

The curvature of the lopsided land
plays hide and seek along with
the clouds and moon blurring realism.

My belief is incurable and so is
the facade of pleasure that I show
while I follow compellingly,
the whistle of the colliery.

My faith lies in the train,
in the wilderness and
the vaporous figure of my love
while my whims are chained
with famine and society
that may identify me as a mad
once I leave my job and run
into the hazy backwoods.

Two Worlds

A blue lake captures my soul in its
unmeasured, unimaginable depths
where a new world better than lands
survive drinking immortality.

Howling wolves pierce melancholy
and the dropping leaves stuck with
fever of spring bows down
before the majestic stance
of endless sky and waters.

Echo of unknown sounds emerging
from the interstices of the woods
run wildly, circle around ears
like unquenched souls.
Striking against trunks topless trees
they become one with lingering serenity.

The bridge connecting them to my land
is left broken for years,
perhaps broken by the Gods
and none has dared to swim across
for both worlds gets bewildered
with the laws in either side of the bridge.

Sonnet Mondal has authored seven books of poetry and was bestowed Poet Laureate from Bombadil Publishing, Sweden in 2009. He was inducted in the prestigious Significant Achievements Plaque at the museum of Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur in 2011 and was featured as one of the Famous Five of Bengali youths by India Today magazine in 2010. At present he is the managing editor of The Enchanting Verses Literary Review. Details of his work can be found at www.sonnetmondal.com

Ariana D. Den Bleyker - Two Poems

2011-11-15T20:08:00.000-06:00

To Be the Only Thing Aching

And at dawn, she crawls beneath her covers to escape
the sunrise, replacing it with a hot darkness, particles
of light splaying through the blinds, casting softly
on the blanket wrapping her body in a quiet
shadowed desperation,

and there beneath the covers, the skeletons of memories,
the mind's discarded carcasses lying next to her--
bones of useless things, the weight of his eyes frozen in time,
both measures of distance and the end of desire--

shadowed: darkened exhibits stretched thin
skeletons: open cages housing the songs of birds
time: the delicacy of ephemeral life
desire: to be the only thing aching

all of these words tangled in the sheets, drowning in the sweat,
and in the room next to where she lies, muffled voices,
the rustling of a newspaper, a fan oscillating in the window,
a white sound--emptiness;

beneath the blanket she amplifies, expels this white
sorrow, come to terms with the aching, how her life
echoes a litany of unspeakable words, the heartache
of accountability;

she's close to death, breathing in its inevitability--
the bodies resembling slaughtered cows,
bloodied sacrifices, moments of sacredness;
momentary dust,

everyday debris, this white…letting go, letting go.

Burying the Dead

He says I'm supposed to heal, reconcile
the past, even if pain is the healing
and the reconciling burying the dead.
So I cover myself in black and howl
over empty caskets, watch the internments,
smell the cremations, seek solace|
in stowing red roses beneath my bed,
shelving ashes in my closet. I have only
flowers, a color, a scent, stretching my
insides out until I let it all go, go down,
down until it is dying, dead, my world
breaking open, heart unbound, having no
word for closure or anything like it.

Ariana D. Den Bleyker is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in a small town in New York where she is a wife and mother of two. Her poetry has been most recently featured in scissors and spackle, Stone Highway Review, and other fine journals, and is slated to appear in Grey Sparrow Press among others. Her chapbook, Forgetting Aesop, was released this month by the publishers of scissors and spackle.

David S. Pointer - One Poem

2011-11-14T14:05:00.001-06:00

Death Penalty Dark

If rich men volunteered to
ride the lightning postured
in a 3 point stance ahead
of impoverished prisoners
on death row, maybe I could
believe that they were leading
from the front, but there’s no
light bulbs on in those high
financial shadows—just
false showmanship under
fancy party chandeliers

David Scott Pointer has recent acceptances somewhere-he's just busy trying to come up with new work.

Austin Cunningham - Two Poems

2011-11-11T02:37:00.000-06:00

Football Kid

I only met him

a couple of times

I was really just friends

with his sister

and last night

he jumped off

the bridge on Mooresville

and Cary Parkway.

and we all felt sad

he was one of the football kids

had a lot of friends

and yeah, I sort of thought he was a dick

and yeah, he stole my friend’s bong

but I really wish he hadn’t done that

Ok Ok

i liked to think of you as god

and i loved you

like one loves their house

as it burns to the ground

or road kill

swept to the side

of the highway

we were being dismantled

our joints

removed and sold as spare parts

our brains

deemed as broken beyond repair

so we decomposed

in the junkyard

i became the roots of a tree

you became the worms

Austin Cunningham is a 17 year old writer from Raleigh, North Carolina. He's been published in Sleet Magazine, MediaVirus Magazine and The Scrambler Magazine. He will be attending UNC Asheville, and plays and records music.

Michael Keel - One Poem

2011-11-09T23:01:00.002-06:00

Foreigner

The sun beats down on the Danube, with Freckles of white glaring
Castle hill peaked, an arm crossing its body, ants passing and staring

Children flying over new grass, a dog content and smiling
Basking in the suns glow, grandly warm, wise and beguiling

Breathing in deeply, flowers in the air, seafood in the distance
Foreign dog, new friend, pastry, utmost persistence

Lighting a smoke, taking note, once again in my journal
A moment soon gone, work, no play, nothing is eternal

What was once today is now yesterday, cafes line the river
The sun getting tired, his eyes slowly close, I feel a slight shiver

My espresso cup rests, empty now, a small growl below me
My little friend, all sweet things end, another tourist, another pastry

Michael Keel is a 34 years old and currently freelances for a few magazines with articles covering food, wine and local businesses in Northern California and is working on two other books.

Neil Ellman - Three Poems

2011-11-08T23:14:00.006-06:00

1960-R

(after the painting
by Clyfford Still)

in the end
everything catches on fire
wood stone
burns turns red
wax dolls
drip chaos
(the uncertainty
of the moment)
flashes
of lightning
spark
the end.

April

(after the painting
by Kenneth Noland)

so, sun
shimmering face
circled
majesty
the face of time
not mine
speaking limitless
time
not my own
energy
not
millenia
years instead
i circle you
for a time
as if time
were my own

January 1951

(after the painting by
Clyfford Still)

as if Vesuvius
rained biting flies
darkness at noon
suddenly
the blue sun
eclipsed
what was
no longer is
what is black
is black
is
as in another life

Neil Ellman lives and writes in New Jersey. His poems, many of them ekphrastic, appear in numerous print and online journals, anthologies, broadsides and chapbooks throughout the world.

John Grochalski - One Poem

2011-11-01T23:57:00.001-05:00

Smelling Like an Ocean Breeze

standing in this shower
that doesn’t drain right

the water never hot or strong enough for me

always coming out like warm piss

the shower in this apartment
feels like what it must be like to be pissed on

i look at the row of shampoos and soaps and think
today i want to smell like an ocean breeze

there are a lot of shampoos and soaps in my shower

a hazard of living with a woman
but i’ve gotten used to it over the years

bottles promising to bodify my hair
whatever in the hell that means

others promising to make it shine
give it bounce

but this morning i want to smell like an ocean breeze

so i grab the plastic bottle
filled to the top with electric blue goop
and begin washing my hair
while i look at all of the other bottles

the ones smelling of lavender
the one smelling of strawberries

the body wash bottle promising the scent of rain
all of my wife’s silver tubes of hair dye conditioner

it beats looking out the small window we have
the one oddly placed in the shower

it beats watching the cheerless neighbors going off to work
or taking their dogs out for a shit

watching the joggers sweat it out another block
the kids heading off to school for another day
of forced socialization and disappointment

the cluster fuck of traffic
caught in another construction site vortex

it beats watching the garbage men leave
boxes of trash, paper, cans,
and old food smeared all over the street
from bags they’ve dropped and split open

it keeps me from wondering why
they don’t just pick it the fuck up

i mean they are garbage men for christ sake

it beats watching the sun rise on another hopeless day
in this godforsaken city

washing my hair with the scent of an ocean breeze
conditioning it with the scent of an ocean breeze

i suddenly get depressed

i come to the conclusion that
these products don’t smell of salt and sea at all
or even sand for that matter

they smell like sugar and cheap perfume

like no ocean that i’ve ever been to
or want to rest my fat white belly on

and that i’m going to spend the day
smelling like some hussy in a french whorehouse

they are just an illusion these shampoos

a pipe dream

another con job compliments of
your local neighborhood corporation

this one promising beauty and bliss

a clean breeze coming off the ocean
a hopeful moment away from this constant mess

and in my thirst for something
just a little bit outside the norm

something just a little bit better
than the constant flow of mediocrity
that i see outside this shower window
each and every sad and uneventful morning

i fell for it hook, line, and sinker

because deep down i know that an ocean breeze
doesn’t smell like this

the ocean smells of shit and death

just like everything else around here.

John Grochalski’s poems and stories have appeared in several journals including The Lilliput Review, Underground Voices, Zygote In My Coffee, The Big Stupid Review, and Bartleby Snopes. Grochalski is the author of two books of poems The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008) and Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010). Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he constantly worries about the high cost of everything.

Peter Marra - Two Poems

2011-10-31T23:37:00.004-05:00

A Transmitter

she threw herself
into becoming normal
she was making progress
the cards were rotated and shuffled
then the schedule changed

She had a burning desire
for the Rorschach test

the pleading
eyes followed her slowly
as if the mirror
that held them
had splintered

a crack in the air

she spit on the
10 official inkblots
a crucifix rotated and slammed
to the ground as she stared

a baby cried in a stroller at the
feet of the St. Francis statue
candle flames quivered

as she manicured her nails
she smiled about exorcisms
at the botanica
that was located on E 3rd St

we met as she stood
among the blossoms
for the next few years

she told me that the inkblots
triggered a response
that she wasn’t ready for

and we weren’t ready
for the ambiguous
designs

it was a day and
it was enough

“such a lovely beast”

for an experiment
for a parasite
for a predator

A Terror of Spring

hospital:
a long walk down the hallway
mildew spirals / slight sounds
a murmur from behind
we heard the whirring

they rolled her on the linoleum floor
while they slammed the doors shut
a generator of dreams
a machine of tremors

she wondered
what he was like as a child
and how he had progressed
to this condition

afterwards:
a drive into suburbia
slow sounds / dusty eyes
we watched as they went home
the doors closed

a season cold sting venom

a terror of spring
the tingling fear after 2 pm.
warm air scares / the afternoon sun kills.

cough it up and fling it at the moon
remove the shadows and hang them up
try it once and we'll see
outlaws against nature

what they promised us, they took back.

Peter Marra is from Williamsburg Brooklyn. Born in Brooklyn, he lived in the East Village, New York from 1979-1987 at the height of punk – no wave. Peter has had a lifelong fascination with Surrealism, Dadaism, and Symbolism.

Barbara Sue Mink Spalding - Four Haiku

2011-10-31T01:31:00.003-05:00

The Curl of the Fern II

Misty rain turns the
peace of this year’s summer to
still, deepening green.

Idaho State Fair--1964

Sun and sickness there
at the bleachers, with sawdust.
Mother was too late.

Japan –1500 AD
(Come along, come along)

It is in Edo
they say, that you can find the
best of all we are.

City Heat

Hot sun, red hot sun.
Waves of heat up from the street,
black night to cool all.

Barbara Sue Mink Spalding lives in Orange County, California, with an address in Westminster, she is currently homeless, looking for a place to live and for work. Barbara writes op-eds, poetry, and short stories. She is a member of the Sons of Italy, Hollywood Lodge, NAMI, and contributes to the October 22 Coalition. She's 52.

Tom Pescatore - One Poem

2011-10-26T10:03:00.001-05:00

Stupid

Car breaks squeal at steady intervals
light switching NYC street
up above I catch the sound
with my hand with my ear with my nose
inside two story raised roof terrace
rooms rising (fallingrising) up two more stories
Chelsea Star Hotel like
Arabic Middle Eastern Flag logo
brown & sandy under
heavy powder blue sky sifted,
the world's so small for eyes
yet big & clumsy & beautiful (sometimes)
for the mind if only we'd
see it as it is on strings spinning round
fiery gods, timeless and young--

Tom Pescatore grew up outside Philadelphia, he is an active member of the growing punk/lit scene within the city and hopes to spread the word on Philadelphia’s new poets. He maintains a poetry blog: amagicalmistake.blogspot.com. His work has been published in literary magazines both nationally and internationally but he'd rather have them carved on the Walt Whitman bridge or on the sidewalks of Philadelphia's old Skid Row.

Arjun Devanesan - One Poem

2011-10-22T19:45:00.002-05:00

Wanderers in Deep Uncharted Jungle Territories
Seeking Medical Assistance

Giving people,
who,
without obvious intention and lacking tact or subtlety,
catch viral infections from the most tacky of tropical climes,

who,
being entirely insensitive to sanitation or hygiene
(in the metaphorical sense of course)
without reservation or even the slightest sense of direction,
wander aimlessly,
not to mention deliriously,
throughout the jungles of Borneo or Papua New Guinea,
desecrating the thereabouts and other such unspeakable indecencies,

proper medical
(or psychological for that matter)
treatment seems,
upon consideration,
unjustified as such an expense may seem in this instance
(though necessary as we,
being civilized,
must),
without a doubt the most ludicrous waste of resources,
natural or unnatural,
that one could think of at a moments notice.

Arjun Devanesan was born in India but lived in Indonesia and Singapore before arriving in Essex, England. Arjun is a doctor most of the time, and writes with most of the rest of the time.

Brett Stout - One Poem

2011-10-21T23:22:00.003-05:00

Shudder to Apocalypse

Concrete,
leads the way to a bleak landscape
greed and gluttony oh my capitalist beast,

corporate isolation,

surrounding me
covering me
smothering me
with their trademarked logos
of hate and oppression,

atom bombs,

are released in euphoria
as the suburbs of utopia lay in rubble
once pale men turn to charcoal colored dust,

the lab rats,
are released from their captivity
they sit on my couch and watch cable TV
growing disillusioned and obese
they truly are Americans now
value sized and cheap.

Brett Stout is a 32 year old artist and writer living in Myrtle Beach, SC. He is a highschool dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and paramedic. He writes while mainly hung-over on white lined paper in a small cramped apartment in Myrtle Beach, SC. He published his first novel of prose and poetry entitled "Lab Rat Manifesto" in 2007.

Catherine De Souza - One Poem

2011-10-17T22:45:00.001-05:00

The Midnight Seagull

He crawls into my window
late into the middle of the night.
I feed him a grilled cheese sandwich;
the crunchy burnt bits--
they hang off the tip of his beak
and crumble into crumbs
around our feet.
Before morning light rises
I see him circling the sky
I see him circling the space
outside my window
and I cry.

Catherine De Souza lives on Vancouver Island. She has 2 short stories published in a local magazine and has taken part in several spoken word events and open mics over the last few years.

Robert Laughlin - Four Poems

2011-10-15T23:11:00.000-05:00

It was His Livelihood:

A silver tongue, a knack for coaxing men to change their minds and loyalties.
He started out, predictably, by selling cars,
And was, by dollar value, much the biggest seller on the lot.
You came to buy a plain econobox and drove away in something else
That had five hundred horses; he'd convinced you of
The false morality of thrift.
His talent found a greater scope in real estate.
It didn't take him long to prove
To anyone with half a yen to buy a house
That housing values must go up and mortgage rates go down.
Negotiation pays the highest wage,
And many was the time he took a hefty fee
For showing prosecutors what a risk it was to their careers
To charge a guilty person by the book,
Or talking union members into thinking half a loaf was much too much.
Of course, he ended up in politics.
He got an honest congressman's constituents to give the man
An unexpected honor: a gold watch.
Once in, he held his seat for thirty years.
His rousing speeches, written by himself,
His numerous alliances, discarded when their usefulness was past,
His principles, which always had an exit door behind a tapestry,
Did nothing for the nation--but
The pork his gift of gab steered home and NIMBY items steered away
Ensured that, each November in an even-numbered year,
His necessary friends were never less than fifty per, plus one.

It was his livelihood:
A phrase that's relevant to those who aren't dead.
And now he's in a cancer ward,
Unable to get up and knowing that his silver tongue
That made so many temporary friends
Is powerless to stop the clock beside his bed,
To stop the process that converts, with each inexorable tick,
One pancreatic cell from loyal friend to lethal enemy.

Problem Solved

Make a device that lets one see
An unborn infant's destiny,
And in no time, you'll solve the nation's
Problem of swelling populations.

DC & LA

In Washington,
the maxim that your dog's your only friend is all too true.

In Tinseltown,
your dog cares more about designer collars and the poodles on the beach than you.

Rodia that Hugs the Ground, It Is

Rodia that hugs the ground, it is
my third week on the new postal route
today I meet the people at stop forty-one
they've got a package that won't fit into their box
I know it won't--I measured it before mailing it to them
a plain one-story stucco house
they landscaped their front yard with castoff items, and it's simply gorgeous
upthrusting multicolored vinyl plates border the lawn
flagstones to the front door are pink and blue terrazzo from some old office building
discarded wickets were bent and fused to sculpt a howling watchdog
five kinds of flowers poke up through the mouths of half-buried bottles
a wrought-iron fence spike and triangle of sheet steel, painted in warm colors, do
duty as a perfectly functional weathervane
the turf is crushed taillight covers mixed with shredded glow-in-the-dark Frisbees
you wouldn't believe how everything looked when I drove by after dark
this neighborhood has poor drainage
a rivulet runs across their front yard when it rains, so they made it a seasonal creek
dug out a channel and lined it with tumbled lumps of roadbed
at the broadest point, there's a waterwheel: two bicycle wheels with split Clorox
bottles between them
the junk garden is fairly new
climbing ivy in the planters hasn't gotten far up the driftwood trellises and bower
whenever the owners tend their plants, it's not when I deliver, and I haven't seen
them yet
but now I see a car in their carport
and I know the houses on this block have big back yards
when I hand-deliver the package, that's when I'll ask to see what they've done in back

Robert Laughlin lives in Chico, California. His poems have appeared in Bryant Literary Review, Camroc Press Review, elimae, The Orange Room Review and Pearl. His website is at www.pw.org/content/robert_laughlin.

Nicolas Grenier - Three Poems

2011-10-12T11:03:00.004-05:00

Untitled

Snow, in the air taken, dizzy,
To the origins quite coming back.
(White cloud falling back
On the landscape, silently.)

Untitled

As a vast dream lying
You stare at the sky
Back to the air, fleeting.

Untitled

Between sky and earth,
Snow, as a Beauty
Which is changing
Every moment
The form of the landscape.

*translated from French by Emmanuel Cheiron.

Nicolas Grenier has been published in fifty literary rewiews. Nicolas is the winner of the Paul Eluard Prize from the Society of French Poets. He is a professor at HEC, too. Nicolas lives in Paris.

Lindsay Reed - Two Poems

2011-10-06T23:12:00.003-05:00

Pre-Analysis

There are places so deep
inside you there is no
gender anymore. We are
all innocent and female
because the male has not
yet been called to battle.
Here it is okay to cry.
Here it is very wet.
Let's live here in the
axe wound that contains
the universe and regress
to the point where existence
means more than potential.

No Mixer

I realized drinking vodka
didn't help me learn Russian.
But it means 'little water'. Cute water.
Writing on kindergarten paper
with a fat pencil did help though.
I write it pretty well,
speak it like a kid.
Eager but greatly lacking.
I drink vodka the best.
Now I listen to my downstairs
neighbors speak Russian late
at night and smell their cigarette
smoke mixed with mine on the patio.
I can taste the consonants
that don't exist in English.
So many times I hear a word I know.
'I understand' and 'Do you understand?!'
I wish I did.
If I had the courage,
enough vodka, I would
lean over the rail
and say 'Good night'
in their beautiful language
that calls night
night only after midnight.

Lindsay Reed lives in Denver and practices massage therapy.

Steve Calamars - One Poem

2011-10-04T12:38:00.004-05:00

Working Man

which means
i’m part of the
walking dead

haunted by
graveyard shifts
and black mondays

where the nightmare
of labor
becomes the reality
of a life time . . .

Steve Calamars lives in TX. His first collection of short stories, Six Years of Relative Happiness, is available from Calliope Nerve Media and LuLu.

Joan McNerney - Two Poems

2011-10-01T22:59:00.003-05:00

"A" Train

brassy blue
electric

close eyes
watch points
like stars

think now
how insignificant
compared to train
speaking for itself

stars known
in no language
burn shoot
thru
tiger's eyes

brain in
constant action
reaction
to what we do not know
plans of distant stars
galaxies floating as

"A" train
silver worm
slides under
big belly
of city

Rendezvous　

That was the name of a paint
can from J&M Hardware.

With sweat lingering on her
face, she colored her room.

Tinted now like insides of
ripe plums, like perfect grapes.

When the sizzling lemon sun
dropped from heaven...night
became moist and black.

Her fan whirled thick air
stained with cigarettes
coffee, turpentine, white wine.

She sank into her wicker couch
as fog horns trail the horizon.

Lotus screech relentlessly for water
always wanting more more more water.

Closing her eyes, remembering him
now tasting the feast of his smile.

Joan McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines such as Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Blueline, 63 channels, Spectrum, and three Bright Spring Press Anthologies. Four of her books have been published by fine small literary presses.

Pamela Klein - Two Poems

2011-09-29T20:37:00.004-05:00

The Myth of Albrecht Dürer's Brother

Who worked in the gold mines,
twisting his eyes, his fingers,
so Albrecht could learn to paint
bird wings. Whose lungs filled
with dust so his brother could breathe
the sweet air of high regard. Who
might have been a better artist,
or a doctor, or a farmer, instead
of a crippled shadow. The myth
is a lie: this brother didn't exist,
didn't give up his life for Albrecht.
And yet he does exist. He does.

Germophobia

wouldn't be the word for it:
this itch beneath my skin
to erase what lingered when you left.
I'm not worried about catching colds
or viral anything, really--
when I scrub the plate you ate from,
the fork you used, your cup,
I try to wash away the traces
of your lips, the heat from your hands.

My hands are raw from this.
My eyes crawl over what you touched:
that chair, the wall next to the light switch,
the bedroom doorknob. I threw away
the bed sheets, but not the matches
you left by the makeshift ashtray.
I saved them just in case Lysol
and bleach don't clean you out of my house.

-after Ronald Wallace

Pamela Klein's poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in the Paterson Literary Review, the Tipton Poetry Journal, Plain Spoke, Barbaric Yawp, and Inner Weather.

Louis Marvin - Two Poems

2011-09-27T21:58:00.003-05:00

Mud Bucket

It's the weirdest thing I guess I do
and telling you, means we are special friends
I am a full grown man that makes mud pies
no, not with my grandkids or their friends
no, not to lure kids to a nightmare
I simply am a full grown man that likes to make mud pies in his backyard
like a man that likes to dress in his wife's clothes while she is at work
I go into the backyard, get some dirt in this old mud bucket
I get the hose and I make mud pies
I put stuff to represent toppings on them
I have it down to an art form

On Stage With Louis' BS Poems

“ladies and gentlemen, I present to you now, Paul Burks”
he comes out to a smattering of applause and looks nervously into the dark
while the light blinds him
clears throat, and steps to mic
“I can't believe I lost this bet, but here goes”
“These are some pieces from my friend Louis Marvin. I lost a bet and the bet was that I would come up here and recite some of his poems.”
“Ok, so this is called “Silence of the Lamb Chops”:
oh screaming lamb, shut the hell up
I'm a hungry SOB and you, young lamby
look lovely in your mint jelly jacket
some small potatoes and veggies on the side

He shakes his head, and sighs a heavy men's sigh into the mic
people look like they did when Andy Kaufman first hit the stage
“Ok, I'll do one more”
“This one is called “Who Needs Zombies?”:
I have been biting my nails like a gerbil that eats it's own babies
like the Donner party
No wait, like the last cannibals and head shrinkers
No wait, like Rod Serling smoking before he went on Night Gallery
with relish and like that was the last smoke he would ever smoke
To the cuticle? hell, I bit them to the elbow
“Jesus, I am out of here.”
“Ok, thanks Peter. Sorry, Paul. That was just weird enough for us to bring the band back”
“Let's hear it for Caps 'n Holsters-and a little country rock thing.”

Louis Marvin is Burbank born, Phoenix raised and Honolulu loving.

Uma Gowrishankar - One Poem

2011-09-22T19:21:00.001-05:00

In The Heart Of Nowhere

On certain days I need tea turned rancid,
cinnamon sticks at my bedside,
flavoured anise seeds to chew
when you stick pins into my heart
needles as fine as a crow’s feet :
silver hatchwork in the dark woods.
Fold finely ground pepper in a paper,
dip edges of the paper in jasmine oil :
a fine unguent for a heartache;
spill over the polished stone by the river
supplications of milk and honey
that leave watermarks:
a filigree of illusion against light
that like crab in sand disappears
into the dark heart of nowhere.

Uma Gowrishankar is a writer and artist living in Chennai, South India. Uma's poems have appeared in Whale Sound and Qarrtsiluni. Uma was the finalist in Poetc Asides 2010 November Chapbook Challenge.

Michael Roberti - One Poem

2011-09-21T10:13:00.000-05:00

Playing Cards with Dead Guys

If I was playing cards
with E.E. Cummings
and he wagered
his wheelbarrow
I would kick him
out of my house
(even if so much
depends on it).

If it was Hemingway,
he would probably cheat
(bastard).

If it was Tolstoy,
I sincerely doubt
he would play at all.
(Maybe he is right).

Michael Roberti grew up in the punk scene of a small area, playing in a band that never made it. Currently, he is teaching high school English as a Student Teacher.

Larry Jones - One Poem

2011-09-20T15:07:00.001-05:00

Playing

It was good
to be young
to play in the snow with friends.

It is good
to be old
just to sit alone indoors.

It was good
to be on
earth for a while.

It will be good
to go home
again
and play in the sun with friends.

Larry Jones lives in Utah. He is retired.

Joe Amaral - Three Poems

2011-09-20T10:01:00.001-05:00

Erosion

The sunlight appears wooden today
A dense ice cube
Cranky with crystalline cold
Landslides spatter the squirming trail

Death succors my demeanor
Seeing uprooted trees via sharp spades
Desiccated and hollow as my thoughts
Yearning for an end to this destruction

Scents of chainsaw oil sterilize crisp morning
Spiraling tree rings speak morosely
Decades of standing tall instantly disposed
Mankind scuffing clean air with his manacles

Papery leaves scrape across cracked stones
Fingernails caressing a chalkboard
Harmony of squealing hellions

My happy dog still gallops in the grassy field
Until a ranger orders a leash to choke her throat
Goosebumps ridge my tensed forearms

It all makes our hackles rise tectonically
And my dog is growling in disgust
Knowing the call of the wild no longer

Elder Undulations

All those hideous brains stick to our boots
Gum wads littering a playground

We melt in impaling light too bright for blind eyes
Wizened words unfurling from wrinkled tongues
Earthworms gyrating free from soiled captivity

Young and reckless in summertime restlessness
We wore cotton ball eye patches pretending to be pirates
The ancient walls shunned our concrete shadows
Reborn from cracked shells of molten bottle caps

Sugar high, sugar low

Thinking the end of the horizon where the road disappears
Must be where forever could be found
We swung until rust severed our chain link leather seats

Bodies now aging in barns of bones and sawdust
Amongst castaway tatters of past implements
Chicken de-beakers and beheaded tools
Guttural caricatures carved onto frail crossbeams

Fixated on self-reflective geriatric musings
We read tousled pages crumpled by war-torn hands
Our youth once exploded these callused mirrors

Drawn in the drowning of liquid time
Ripples on a pond since dissipated

My Corpse

Pink fingertips slough away first,
avulsing softly off the bone
Degloved bits of blanched flesh

Toes wiggle free from metatarsals
Tiny maggots burrowing beneath
darkle black decaying soil

They nestle under nutrient rich earth
Snuggling up to her inner core
Kept warm by natural fire

Body appendages putrefy slowly
Seeping and rotting juices
Bloated overripe grapefruit

My skeleton is taking its time,
fighting the roots for room
Macabre leering marionette

The stubborn heart is always last
A penultimate organ donation
to finish postmortem pulsation

On swirls of cradling winds
my carefree soul dances wild
Flying on the drafts of demise

Free from the constraints
of this cadaverous world
Of anatomical human life

Joe Amaral is a paramedic who spends most of his time outdoors spelunking around the central coast of California. His work has appeared in A Handful of Dust, Carcinogenic Poetry, Certain Circuits, Cranked Calorie, Eclectic Flash, Paradigm, RED OCHRE LiT, Underground Voices and in anthologies by Pill Hill Press and Wicked East Press.

Michelle Gaddes - Two Poems

2011-09-19T23:53:00.002-05:00

Sticks for Friends

A Walden-esque burlesque
or some romantic rubbish –
deep in boar ravaged
fragrant fawn forest.
Between the ocean and
lost green – feral couches
cower when winds whip
raggedy shit-house doors.
Tragic bandicoots raid empty
muddled cupboards looking
for showgirls in sugar
bags. Scat, like snow,
blankets beds and it
reeks as it speaks long
to the day. The tap-tap-
tap of a keyboard echoes
from keyholes. The clock
reverts medieval, sacks the
second hand for conspiracy
while Mary-Lou asphyxiates in
spider cyber-space with piracy.
The sticks, for friends –
hit windows, find ways
into beds and crunch
during peak hour drive
time in labyrinths of lonely
moss.

Oniony Overtones

You wanted your body donated to science, you said last year.
A university specimen – to be probed, prodded, pulled apart,
pickled even. Definitely deconstructed like a Foucauldian text.
They would keep you stored on a sterile steel shelf and
the harsh lab lights would accentuate your unsettled veins.
Sticking out like bad NSW roads – your marbled colours
would intrigue ghosts. And the marinade you drip would
fill the campus with oniony overtones; everyone always hungry.
It’s all rather kinky really – a sly plot to have lean academics
handling your swollen heavy bits. They’ll write stories about
your body, perhaps find cures and solve the riddle of
the Sphinx. Professors will nod on the nod and late night
researchers dabbling in fornications will knock you over, smashed.
Glass spiders biting and riding orgasmic music on liquids
like tsunamis, with a thin streak of green. They nip you.
An eyeball here, a pancreas strewn on linoleum and your phallus
making a run for the window – a lab for the absurd.
They sweep you up with a Go-Lo brush, all your bits
they shovel into one large urn. They’d adjust your plaque
and store you in vodka. Naturally, the campus would go
hungry and become alcoholics.

Michelle Gaddes lives in NSW, Australia and writes poetry and short stories. Her first publication is titled Pariah and she has a forethcoming titled, Aurora Borealis by Ginninderra Press.

Ben Nardolilli - One Poem

2011-09-16T01:27:00.005-05:00

Up Bowery

Former farmland, now
buildings rise up and greet me,
I’d rather have them than the trees,
I walk along and there’s enough shade
and more light than otherwise.

Behind the corner are gargoyle bodies,
heads of the despondent poking out
ready to be spouts of praise
asking for coins to dance in their cups.

In the ruins of the ruins to be
assembled into new buildings
useful for everyone coming
from uptown, there are bodies
wearing heads like polyps,
broken off and hanging
under the fluorescent outdoor lights,
none casts a shadow, their smiles
keep away such darkness.

One had his head bowed down,
a hood drawn over the skin,
two hands raised to support
his humility trying to fall to earth,
praying or asleep,
either way, there is release.

Across the street, an angel comes,
blonde hair holding the last remains
of the day’s sunlight,
she turns the corner and escapes
a bus coming down across a tide
of taxicabs, splitting dirty yellow waves,
her shirt rises up on her back
and reveals a target, something
I wish I could reach out and hit.

Ben Nardolilli is a twenty five year old writer currently living in Arlington, Virginia. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, and Yes Poetry.

Suzi Kaplan Olmsted - One Poem

2011-09-14T11:18:00.002-05:00

Jenette Bras

Bras are not just places we put our boobs
so many names for them
tits melons tatas
I woke up one morning to the news
that a bra would be accompanying me on the rest of my journey
day bras, convertible bras, sexy bras, utilitarian bras, sport bras,
comfy bras, bras for sleep and for sex and bras that hurt my neck,
and bras that leave red angry marks where they used to be
or they would, if I ever took them off
I went topless once at a sunny Southern California party
when I was 19
everyone else was running around freed from the confines of clothes
I thought I’d give it a shot
I sunburned my nipples
I never sun anything
I hate the sun
Now I’ll get skin cancer on my jugs hooters boobies
cause everyone was doing it
Jenette is a success, if you want to be a working actor
She works and works –
from my bed I can see her face on my husband’s vampire movie poster
not her only significant role
she was a senior when I was a freshman, and I don’t feel like we’re old
but Hollywood, demon town, East, West or Other
treats her like an old lady now
I gasped the last time I saw her in a movie
Since then I saw her in her eponymous Hollywood lingerie store
fitting a reality show actress with her first bra
she probably doesn’t look much older than I do
but I like to think she does
and now, she could fit a bra for me
tell me how it looks
(but I would never ask her)

*Jenette Goldstein of “Near Dark” -
Jenette Bras is actually the name of her store.

Suzi Kaplan Olmsted has appeared in The Sun, Blue Satellite, 51%, F.T.S, Big Scream, poetrysuperhighway.com, M.A.G., Lummox Journal, getunderground.com and Napalm Health Spa. She is also one of illustrators of The Ellyn Maybe Coloring Book edited by Exxene Cervenka (Sacred Beverage Press, 1997) as well as the Beatitude Golden Anniversary volume.. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize for a poem from her chapbook Industrial Wallet (Virgogray Press), she has another chapbook forthcoming, Elektra’s Mouth.

Mike Meraz - Two Poems

2011-09-08T02:22:00.003-05:00

To Catch Fire

there is too much moisture
in grass.
it needs to die
and become brittle
to catch fire.

Contentment In Breathing

I do not know what I am doing here.
I am reading a book.
I am lying in a bed.
I am existing in this moment.
if I could only relax enough
to enjoy this moment,
to bathe in the beauty of life,
to feel contentment in breathing,
in seeing light.
I can only think of what I do not have,
who I am not with,
why my life isn't where it should be.
suffering is not always joined with pain.
suffering is sometimes feeling no pain at all.

Mike Meraz's new book Black-Listed Thoughts is now available from Propaganda Press

Jack T. Marlowe - Two Poems

2011-09-07T01:59:00.004-05:00

If It Ain't Broke…But It Is

the valley is
free from frost
and suicide
the sun
ripening above
the horizon
a pale
pomegranate
veiled in
the finest
Afghan cotton
gauze

the weather in
Marjah is
near-perfect
but the farmers
still lament
the landing of
Blackhawks
in their
poppy fields

unconcerned
about
wilting flowers
in East Dallas
like Maddie
or Juliette
tying off in a
section eight
hell-hole
before
heading out

for another
round of
blow jobs and
submachine
back-alley fucks
to pay for the
next fix
and the one
after that
because the
last one
didn't fix
one
goddamned
thing.

What Passes for Civilization, Passes

sunflowers
shed petals
like tears, as
triggermen
and bombers
compete with
insurance men
and bankers

to see who
can do the
most damage
to what
passes for
civilization

and
the rats
chatter
and
reptiles
hiss, both
salivating
at the
sight of
humankind

--neither
as human
nor
as kind as
the word
implies--

sinking
to its
collective
knees
praying for
hope and
change

while
a toothless
savior
labors to
gum the
apocalypse
to death

an old dog
with
a rawhide
chew toy
in his mouth

Jack T. Marlowe is a gentleman rogue from Dallas, TX. A writer of poetry and fiction and a veteran of the open mic, his work has appeared in numerous zines, online and in print. Jack is also the editor of Gutter Eloquence Magazine (www.guttereloquence.com).

Ian C. Smith - Two Poems

2011-09-05T09:46:00.002-05:00

Fame & Eva Marie Saint

Your first film, the only woman cast
by fellow Oscar winner Elia Kazan
with Steiger, Malden, Lee J. Cobb
& Brando, desirable hotshock of Streetcar.
American cinema-verite, another first
a triumph in monochrome, the neo-realism
of Hoboken-on-Hudson’s corruption.

After Nebraska, & military school
Brando hung out with Rocky Marciano
absorbing inarticulate authenticity
to transform into a potential contender.
Did you study the religiously dutiful
to become convent-educated Edie
trying to resist young Brando’s Terry?

Your fair hair & skin light up
that bleak waterfront landscape
like the haloed saintly in medieval art.
Often shot in shadowy semi-darkness
Terry contrasts with Edie’s angelic glow
the camera’s work with light & shadow
at the moral heart of this moody film.

In the years following that career debut
during those light-comedic romps
did you think about beginners’ luck
search pages of scripts for magic again?
I picture you, your heart grown older
incognito in New Jersey, wishing a camera
could light you the way it did in youth.

Annual Déjà Vu

The coastal idyll of his holidays
reminds him of boyhood so long ago
higgledy, roads of grey sand, tea-tree.
The locals, different from visitors
transport him, eerily, backwards.
Many vehicles are old, especially
the visitors’ who build shacks
where they leave these wheels all year
because their beach is on an island.
These rusting, rattling dustraisers are
like those that passed his school bus.

The ozone is alive with corruption.
Councillors’ horizons are not straight
signs of change are dollar signs
but visitors prefer the status quo.
Locals refer to artists as ferals
feud with visitors and each other
as they did another time and place
writing stiff letters to the newspaper
which he finds unintentionally comic.
Whirlpools of violence and drugs suck
away the doldrum days of local kids.

In marram grass he glimpses himself
when his days smelled like this
bone nerve nail ligament vein thought
a lonely, unhappy, yearning time
when he deviously plotted escape.
He has found shelter from sea wind
wonders how many years he has left
to keep returning here, to this place
astounded again by his deep love
for starlight on shore wash, house lights
paths of sand, of the heart, this earth.

Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in The Best Australian Poetry, Descant, Island, Magma, The Malahat Review, Southerly,& Westerly. His latest book is Lost Language of the Heart, Ginninderra (Adelaide). He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia.

Gregory Liffick - Two Poems

2011-09-02T01:18:00.004-05:00

Thirsty

The desert
motel pool
was empty
and dry.
The diving
board
the tongue
of a
gaping,
parched
mouth.
Even the
flower box
cacti
panted.
The hose
only
coughed up
dust.

Gospel

A lot
of sin
cities,
but no
one
turns to
salt.
We save
coupons
instead
of our
souls.
Faith
is what
we have
in a
good
warranty.

Gregory Liffick has had several poems published in print and online journals, as well as two chapbooks. He is also a teacher, artist and musician.

Changming Yuan - Two Poems

2011-09-01T10:40:00.002-05:00

Fragile, Archaic China

They listen to you
Surprisingly
Which china are you talking about?
They wondered

Which china are you talking about?
You certainly know
If you please… one accosted you
Which china on the rise? He demanded

You are referring to the ‘sleeping giant’ in the east
The fattening hog to be slaughtered and divided
The country with an elephant’s body
But a chick’s heart

All china out of fashion, he commented
Shrugging his non-colored shoulders
But which china? He persisted
Really antic stuff? China made in Jingde Town?
You really like china?
Blue china? Ming china?
Or perhaps Song china?

You coughed in good will
You realize something
China is interesting to see
Only for its long history.

Worldly Affairs (4): A Zeugma Sketch of Uncle Sam

Every time you stage a play or an election in your own yard
You cannot wait to shake hands with your audiences and their wealth
No matter whether it is the passage of a new bill or an old dilemma
You excel particularly at manipulating public will and private property

With your weeping eyes and hands
You keep waging war and peace far beyond your boundaries
While you kill non-Americans and their hope together
To turn all others and othernesses into biblical dust

More often than not, your selfish intentions prove
Much more destructive than your smart bombs
Your invisible fighter jets strike far farther
Than your visible arms of peace effort

You are simply too great for a small criticism
Too super-powerful for a weak opposition
Too democratic for a totalitarian competition
And too single-minded for a double standard

Changming Yuan, author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and co-author of Voices from the West Coast (2011), is a three-time Pushcart nominee who has poetry appearing in Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Carcinogenic Poetry and nearly 380 others worldwide.

Robert Laughlin - Three Poems

2011-08-31T20:56:00.003-05:00

And Pins Are on the House

Turn down my subs, all you people who edit.
My voodoo doll company lends me unlimited credit.

Concerning Rewrite Requests

“I have written what I have written.”
A policy plain to see:
if it’s good enough for Pontius,
it’s good enough for me.

On the Anniversary of My Submission

Dear Editor, I’d like to know what law
of science says that in the time it takes
the Earth to make a circuit of the Sun,
an impulse in your brain cannot traverse
a neural synapse just a micron wide
to trigger a decision, yes or no.

Robert Laughlin lives in Chico, California. His poems have appeared in Bryant Literary Review, Camroc Press Review, elimae, The Orange Room Review and Pearl. His website is at www.pw.org/content/robert_laughlin.

Chris Crittenden - Three Poems

2011-08-26T10:07:00.003-05:00

Hobo

the struggle
has turned his urges
into railroad tracks.
a wanderlust that pokes
holes in his penniless coat.
he scrounges for copper
among roadside gabble,
mingles with nameless folk
hot with sin in torrential cold.

lustful ribs
trap them all within a single cage.
he gets dragged into the muck,
earning a few claps,
and then off on a binge
whiny with joy, wiggling
against a late asphalt
shapeshifting lover.

it turns out to be the wind,
only she--she who has been tying knots
through sobbing throats.
he is not happy with the sex
as they slur and blur into one,
surrendering as addicts do.
when she finally goes, he lies down,
irrelevant in numbness,
except for dried grass
which crackles against his nape.

Big Collapse

a sash of night
crashed down, eel
of teeth in the stars.
what held up
forever was clearly
not perfect. no supports
in the purported myths.
they attacked him:
crumbling chunks of Canis,
tattered shams of Orion,
sharp sparkles of Swan neck.
his crushed screams
couldn't find god.
he was inside
a calamitous mouth,
as if the universe were
howling for an answer.

all his life he had duly
gazed up at its pretty wounds
and prayed.

Prophecy

a raven chips
at the flavor of ice,
knows well plateaus of cold.

since egg, it has lived
without a roof. never savored
the gist of flame.

breaking through
the hide of a puddle,
it unearths a stiff cat,

and with vigorous jabs
splays organs to
rummage for treats.

nothing left afterward
but an epilogue
of gut and bone.

feline meat
is new to small black tongue.
the meaning unclear.

as never before,
the prophet rushes off,
rasping,

and beating the folds
of its cloak.

I teach environmental ethics for the University of Maine and do much of my writing in a hut in a spruce forest. Some recent acceptances are from: Portland Review, Vox Humana, Poetry Friends and Brink Magazine. I blog as Owl Who Laughs.

Vivian Faith Prescott - Two Poems

2011-08-24T12:19:00.003-05:00

He Dreams of Angels Flying

off the O’Connell Bridge, a short walk from
the Indian Health Services hospital.

He's having old cop-dreams again and a girl
named "Angel" is there in the 4:00 a.m.

Alaskan sunlight, floating heavy in midair,
raven hair flapping, but he catches her,

ripping his shoulder from its socket. The City
gave him a medal that gathers dust in a box.

Again, years later, he's in a rescue boat below
the same bridge; above, a young man sways

in a cloud of iced breath on suspension cables
before leaping into 35 degree water.

After the jump, he plunges in the sea himself
and clutches the boy's head, fighting against

limp wings and swims through winter's darkness;
the smell of alcohol mixes with froth

and salt spray. No medal this time—he volunteers
to pluck celestial souls escaping from the third floor

only to return them to their captive heaven.
At night he pops Advil, rubs his shoulder, while

I lie beside him listening to his breathy moans,
and I know that in dreams he will always catch

fallen angels in their hopeless attempts at flight.

Growing Season

I pluck the huckleberries from the branch
near the fort— now an open field at Totem Park
with one single totem pole, a reminder

of the battle between the Russians and Tlingits.
With berries in hand, my friend gives an elder’s
counsel, how we are not to eat the berries

because it’s sacred ground—blood spilled
on this earth. I think of my ignorance,
how many times I passed by this place

and remember years ago when I visited
Dachau, pondering the leafy plants beside
the fence. I speak to the earth and say,

Ch’a aadéi yei xat naay.oo—forgive me.
My hand unfolds; berries tumble to the ground.
Across the front of my pants—I try to wipe away
my red-stained palm.

Vivian Faith Prescott's poetry has appeared in Yellow Medicine Review, Drunken Boat and Turtle Quarterly. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and has received the Jason Wenger Award for Literary Excellence. She holds a Ph.D. in Cross Cultural Studies and an MFA from the University of Alaska, Anchorage. Vivian's website is http://www.vivianfaithprescott.com

Cara Schiff - Two Poems

2011-08-23T10:38:00.001-05:00

Scene with a Forgotten Woman

Stilts hold up the deck
under the cabin’s high roof.
Trees texture the mountains
in a thousand tiny bumps.

On the deck, a wide-hipped
woman sits on a red barber
chair. She lifts a cigarette--
moving at the speed of
labored thoughts.

Inside, a dish of buttons
sits on a chest of drawers.
A framed witch hangs
above the kitchen sink.
A pan on the crusted
counter holds old bacon.
A girl on the beach hangs
in a photo on the fridge.

Outside, a kidney-shaped ashtray
sits on a weathered stool.
A dusty cat stands
on the woman’s lap,
purring as his paws push into her.

Smoking Through Wyoming

With each puff,
the force of my lungs
pulls the car over
sludgy asphalt.

I crave the light
between my fingers
and that morning feeling--
oiling my lungs with poison.

Each cigarette flies
out the window,
meets countless others,
marks 7 minutes
further from home.

After 140 minutes,
my stomach seizes
on the inhale.
A stranger’s skin coats
the inside of my cheeks
and my gas station soda
washes it away.

On the roadside,
snow’s yellow grass
hairs shift--unaware
of me, my car,
and my cigarette.

Cara Schiff was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Currently, she is a student in the undergraduate writing program at Metropolitan State University in Denver. Most recently, she was published in the online magazine, amphibi.us. She is the 2011 recipient of the Candy Lee Osgood Scholarship for Creative Writing.

Michael Aaron Casares - Two Poems

2011-08-20T16:18:00.004-05:00

New Love, New Love

There is a radiance shining in
further above than the atmosphere
distant across this hemisphere,
encircling north and south in golden love.
Halo hue effervesce a sparkling dew
a radiance seen by stars and spheres
approaching, sitting and leaving.
I and fifty radiant beings
hands in lap and stems stretched high
ascending with each other, waiting patient
as we do for the rightful hand that belongs to you
to join us by our side. No distance like the distance
that parts our eyes from each other; no distance like
the space that puts us face to face--
another time, another place, another flowering dimension
stretched vast across the ether of time and no time;
present in this moment, a warming in your heart.

Re-Awakened

I come across this information;
for everything a time, a place.
Even in my misdirection
when I walked off my path
this detour manifested
to show me something I didn't know,
to help me learn and understand
or distract my universal flow;
all things meant to be meant to be,
for everything a place,
a time to grow within this knowledge,
to grow without false truths.
I'm allowed to understand things
thousands will not understand,
will not take the time to try and comprehend.
Create this thing called reality,
not alone as realities go.
Shaping visions into flesh,
shaping dreams right from the bone;
this simple knowledge I've been given to reflect
the paths I've never known, or have forsaken
with choices lacking balance,
selfish arrows of deceit,
weighed by deeper forces
lower pitched in frequency.
Energy that pulled me down
until my soul was compromised,
surrendering to a negative light,
unraveling cold with lack of love
that could spiral through and from my heart.
Problems lost of moderation,
scales erect tip not imbalance,
a feather here, a feather there;
the weight of words activate the living--
tones of voice, context, meaning
all within the souls expression.
Learning once again the living,
as peace and harmony are giving
life a second and third chance,
to light the path and find the way
as we enter our cosmic day
and ascend with one another,
destined met to meet together,
merged of spirit and heart.

Michael Aaron Casares edits Carcinogenic Poetry. He is the author of This Reality of Man, a new collection of poetry from Lizard's Tale Press. Purchase online at Amazon, B&N, or request it at your local bookstore. Also available on ipad and ipod touch through iBooks. Michael's work has appeared in several anthologies and journals throughout the Internet and in print publications.

Louis Marvin - Three Poems

2011-08-19T20:11:00.003-05:00

Buddhist Temple

right across from China town
don't pick the flowers or fruit
you can burn ancestral $ and incense to boot
in the shadow of the botanical gardens
next to the sick flowing stream
the Chinese girls burn and pray
a Buddha dream
when life jumps track
when we are wracked
it's not what we want
we head to the Buddha temple
return to monk's haunt
the girls lit the incense stick
old man lays down some fruit
I'm sitting under leafy tree, while they get down to the root

these problems float away on smoke
in prayers north, south, east and west
a donation would help too
as we put the demons to rest

Soul

Talk about hard workers. Devils have the greatest work ethics. There are lots and lots of souls to harvest.

This is the story of a devil who was on a much needed vacation. He went to Hawaii. There, stumbling drunk one night in his human guise, he felt such a strong pull. He felt like jumping out of his human skin and harvesting. He looked up and found himself standing in front of a church. What?

The next day, sober as a little old lady, he made a walking church tour in Honolulu.

Each church was like a mine filled with precious metals and gems. He was a miner for a black heart and decayed soul. The churches were teaming with them.

So began his walking church tour, where his vacation turned to serious, hard work. He had shades and blue Hawaii drinks. Nice.

C U C

We have a history here of ghosts who had oppressed the Hawaiian people. A history of those praying while laying waste to the histories and cultures of their fellow man.

This one really felt like big business church, as it had cameras and a campus like feel. A gold mine for a determined devil. Step in and soak up the feeling.

I will return, for like night to day, devil to angel, and quick and dead, there is the good, good, good here at Central Union. Hell, we saw a wedding from afar just today. I'll be back.

Louis Marvin is Burbank born, Phoenix raised, and Honolulu loving.

Cornelius Fortune - One Poem

2011-08-17T10:10:00.001-05:00

One

I’m justified in the paradoxical exploration of my mirror-self
Sunlight is disposed, recycled, and repurposed from the imagination
of gods, slumbering

ancient translations engraved in flesh cheapened by booze

whereas premarital sex meditations
merge with dreamscape headlines
four columns deep
several catastrophes wide

a dangerous smile in the dark (a tongue twister), beckons

apotheosis strips the dance down to the molecule

I am reduced to recurring events dubbed as déjà vu
Staring blindly at the bar table’s reflective glare

Happy hour demolished, the bartender’s cleavage
seems an open invitation
to the exploration of wormholes

A native Detroiter, Cornelius Fortune's work has appeared in Metro Times, the Advocate,Chess Life, Yahoo News, Carcinogenic Poetry, Tales of the Unanticipated, Illumen and others. Visit his website at www.corneliusfortune.com.

John Pursch - One Poem

2011-08-16T23:29:00.003-05:00

How

It took her twenty years
to find a way to tell us
about her first husband.

How he locked her in the attic
and starved her down
to eighty pounds.

How she finally broke free,
running naked
through the town.

How they glued her back together
and the brute was sent to prison
and divorce cost her a dollar.

How she one day had a family
and somehow found the courage
to tell her kids the story.

How she lived her life in silent shame,
afraid that we would judge her
by the mistakes of her past.

John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His poetry has appeared in Breadcrumb Scabs, Calliope Nerve, Camel Saloon, Clockwise Cat, Counterexample Poetics, Four and Twenty, Orion headless, Puffin Circus, and vox poetica.

Gregory Wm. Gunn - One Poem

2011-08-15T11:49:00.004-05:00

Ephemeron Song

Like a thundercloud it will burst
and I shall be aware but only
for a split second.

It will penetrate my skin
like a bolt, spring like a puma
from tired old eyes.

It will be both repugnant
as well as aesthetically appealing
like graffiti painted upon
the promised land’s walls.

Like a tenacious horse,
it will become unbridled,
command its own course.

It will flare up and radiate cheer
like a ballad master’s mouth
fanning flames.

And it will keep me on
lidless vigils
like terror-striking thrashes
of the setting sun.

Gregory Wm. Gunn live in London, ON. He is a graduate of Fanshawe College To date, his poems have been published in Inscribed Magazine, Green’s Magazine, The Toronto Quarterly, Songs for Every Race, One Earth, Ditch Magazine, Aim Magazine, Psychopoetica, Dream International, and Cyclamens and Swords. Also published are five collections of my selected poetry.

Joseph Farley - Three Poems

2011-08-11T11:29:00.000-05:00

No Person Shall Be Deprived Of Property
Without Due Process of The Law

The air and water
and even the future,
property of all,
has been stolen.

We know the names
of the thieves.
They laugh now
and count their profits.

The mob presses faces
against the gates
of corporate palaces
begging justice.

It shall not come
from filthy hands
covered in gold and oil.
It may not come at all,

but righteous anger
can not be silenced.
We shout, mad,
at the swirling sands

as gray skies
turn to thundering blackness
and rain acid extinction
down upon our heads.

Scene of the Battle

a field grown thick
with wild bayonets,
stalks gleaming silver
with stains of red,
here is the home
of the fallen,
and those who fought
for nation or home,
all gone to seed
in the yellow sunshine,
pricking the afternoon sky
with troubling history.

Written In The Sand

White sand and a large umbrella
I watch the ocean, listen to seagulls,
safe from the sun under layers of oil
and a wide circle of portable shade.
I read a few pages from a summer novel.
It is light reading, but seems overfed.
The book tumbles from tired hands.
I do not try to pick it up.
Instead I run fingers through the sand,
tracing gullies that link into words,
a few short lines that bake in the heat
until a rising wind erases every thought.

Joseph Farley edited Axe Factory for 24 years. His books include Suckers, For the Birds, and Longing for the Mother Tongue (March Street Press).

Drea Kato - Three Poems

2011-08-07T20:46:00.004-05:00

Stages Of Suicide

Tonight I'd like to tear myself apart,
cut one huge slice, reach in there
and take all of it out. It's all dead and dirty,
all useless and poisonous anyway.

All I want is to have you
in my grasp again. Hold your hand
through one more drunk drive, one more
oh no at a red light. Just one more

abduction or sexual assault
in the belly of the night.
One more pile of tears & clothes,
one more person telling you
that you are worthless.

When I was a little girl I had vivid
dreams of you dying and I would
wake up crying but I never told
anyone about them. I wonder if

my Native American subconscious
realized at a young age that you
were already in early stages of suicide.
Forgive me, if I never call your name again;

I have only spoken in my dreams to the dead,
atop mountains of TVs, and while watching
nightmares unfold in grocery stores,
like giant pieces of origami. Forgive me

for falling into this lightless day.
I hope this revolution won't die in me,
because I am crawling back slowly,
empty day by empty day.

Without Love

Sometimes it is good to witness yourself
coming apart. Seeing your own skin
broken open, like flowers. Seeing your lifeblood
leak.

I want to pour hot gasoline down your throat
and tar and feather you with my pink boa. I want to
make love on a mountain, and to a goat, myself.
Today I played with spoonfuls of molly at the
dollhouse.

I want you to hold my hands behind my back,
touch my hair lightly. You pumped pink blood
into my blue heart, I love you but there's no point
in saying it.

If your heart were a papaya, I'd eat it.

Sometimes it is good to destroy your own art,
and then light it on fire. Seeing colorful flames.
Smelling like smoke. Sailing.

My red plaid skirt is covered in snot. My room
is a semen stain that glows under the black-light.
I get cut leaning against the walls. I can see
my legs now, which means I can see the glass in them
too.

I like the shiniest and sunniest things in life.
You know I have never tried counting the stars or eating the
organs of horses. I think the only thing
straight lines are good for
is making razor blades.

I wish I had your stomach ache full of cigarettes,
menthol gum & black flowers. In my room, there
are baskets of stars I picked waiting for you. Today,
I wanted to give you all your favorite things,
but lost them.

Yesterday I wanted to tell you
that while I swim I will touch my tummy
and hate it, and wish I were something else.
I don't want to tell you I smoke pot in bathroom stalls,
and try to hang myself in them too. I don't want you
to be afraid of my thoughts, my blankets
or my pillows.

There is no one who will wear truth like a bib,
who will let it run down their lips, brown and wet.
When I realize there is no more love and it gets cold again,
I will run away
somewhere warmer, somewhere smaller. I hope the military
doesn't leave you bloody baby.

What happened to you in the sun? Rainbows jumped into your smile,
there, at dusk in the woods. I would rather watch you bright, on
your toes for someone else. My body immediately rejects you,
howling for somebody else.

All I want to do is reflect, like mirror. I want to lay
broken in pieces too. I get bored with nouns easily. I
don't like games, and I don't know how I feel

without love.

Toxemia

My heart needs to be bled
and yours needs to be bleached.
Our hands need something dead in them
like tongues or books full of flat flowers.
Our prayers together create blood in the walls.
In the drips I see you in the bathtub vomiting
pages of dictionaries, shutting me out.
I see a plastic set of veins coming out of my legs
and every day your voice splits me open like an axe.
And for these veins in my hands I would trade you
today & yesterday; I would trade you the Iraq War
all the Senators & the dead meat on your plate.

Every time someone buys me a birthday present,
I realize they don't know me at all
and it is a brightly-wrapped reminder
of failure of heart & bone, of eyes half closed,
the bibliophile's metronome.

It is strange that we make things
and then we break things
and then we fix our broken things and feel joy.
It is strange that we drink milk meant for calves
and we invent Tuesdays & Thursdays & nuclear war.
It is strange that you eat candy out of the trash
and somehow convince yourself that you are okay.

Climbing on top of me is a dark blur and a smile
appears in one of its gaping endless holes.

Inanition is heaven. Money becomes a foreign object
much like forceps or hair clips or pieces of metal stuck
inside different parts of you for different reasons.
It becomes some thing you have that is not particularly pretty
that you can use to acquire prettier things. It becomes you.
It becomes your smile and whatever kisses befall your lips.

I regret not being there to tuck you in tonight,
not being able to kiss your hands that have fixed
so many things. Just give me one more weekend
to poison my blood. One more day to inhale anything
black. One more minute to say goodbye goodbye
goodbye to your sweet face. Let me become a dog
and die by chocolate. Your hardness is left in me,

dries up like a riverbed, cracks, and is forgotten.
The love you left in my mouth has metastasized and I swallow
every gift you gave me so I can call you to complain
of a stomach ache. It is too easy to turn corn
or rice into some kind of drug, one you can mass produce,

& make billions. May begins again as if it hasn't left you
so many times before and green Xs multiply like army ants.
The contents of our cabinets become those of my gut,
and I come away knowing what they say is true: there is always
tomorrow. And every unicorn bleeds black. Every president
has his or her handicap. All the buildings in the world
will eventually fall down. And it is better to burn than to disappear.

Drea Kato has lived a nomadic life throughout the United States and writes about her experiences. Views with an emphasis on the ultraviolet spectrum.

Kristi Nimmo - One Poem

2011-08-07T20:22:00.002-05:00

Beginning to End

I swim underwater, the billboards
enticing land with sunlight--

where things drop out and we wonder
where did they go?

A billow, as if there were no clouds
beneath the water, naked nectar

in an amethyst cup. Mermaids asleep
on the bottom as if their faces,

across scattered stones and grass,
had caught fire and were extinguished.

The hotel on the Jersey shore a pale-
liquid shadow, a wooden ship anchored.

I remember drawing mermaids,
their breasts uncovered,

and thinking it was racy.

Kristi Nimmo writes in Virginia. She also loves to paint, teach meditation, and travel. Her poetry is often inspired by her sojourns. She has poetry published in Psychic Meatloaf: Journal of Contemporary Poetry, Mouse Tales Press, and Numinous: Spiritual Poetry.

Gregory Liffick - Three Poems

2011-08-05T09:34:00.004-05:00

Trinkets

The being
chain
often
dangles us
like charms
on a
bracelet.
Only for
looks.
Not like
a ring
that
ties us
to something.
Cheap
brass.
Not
dipped
in gold.

Crier

He stood
on a
milk crate
in the
park,
reading
his work
to mostly
indifferent
passersby.
Only
curiosity
stopped
a few
to listen.
Nothing
in the lines
bowled
over ears.
But he
spoke them
loud
and clear.

Cycle

Spring
flows
to stream,
to the river,
to the
sea.
Lungs
take in
air,
flows to
the blood,
to the
heart,
to the
brain.
Clouds
exhale
rain back
to the
earth.
We breath
out
the carbon
that makes
and
remakes
us.

Gregory Liffick has had about fifty poems published in about thirty print and online journals and has had two chapbooks published. He is also a special education teacher, artist and musician.

Robert Wexelblatt - Two Poems

2011-08-03T15:37:00.004-05:00

Ointment

The hedges are trimmed and the grass
mown; all is green and flat around
the concrete pedestal; myrtle

and violets flourish beneath
the magnolia and pines. The bathroom
tiles gleam; the desk is dust-free,

the kitchen counters spotless as the
bamboo floor, the Shiraz rug, your
lungs and conscience. You’ve exercised,

sweated, showered, and nobody’s
phoned to raise alarms. Well-being
suffuses the summer afternoon

which is silent, blue. You’re half through
Conrad’s Rover; Les Enfants du
Paradis waits for nightfall on

a silver disk. You recall Brahms’s
Second Serenade in your ears
as you biked beside a pasture,

three horses, how she used to smile.
Regret’s been crammed into a drawer.
Sparrows and butterflies rejoice.

Your work’s gone well; one hour after
dinner should suffice to finish.
Because nothing is wrong, time stops.

Credit Default Swaps: A Ditty

People’s eyes look different;
knees and chins aren’t quite the same.
On the subway there’s the scent
of brutality, lust, and blame.

Out-of work engineers eat
hard cheese, stale peanut butter.
Staggered by the price of meat
the pink-slipped teachers mutter.

The young deny all that they can,
dancing in a din gone manic.
Their souls are bright, their skins are tan,
but their frenzy betrays panic.

The vacant house, a dream in lath,
the dandelion lawn grown rank,
boarded windows and the birdbath—
All are owned by a shaky bank.

In July, cinder-blocks swelter
beneath a hot, insolvent sun.
There’s coughing in the crammed shelter
where children sprawl and nothing’s fun.

Complexity got drunk with greed;
their revels lasted days and days.
But champagne bubbles aren’t seed,
And the piper never minds who pays.

You still can drown though you’re a fish;
ambition gasps when hopes are curbed.
Yet the respiration of the rich
proceeds, enviably undisturbed.

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

Allison Whittenberg - One Poem

2011-08-03T15:30:00.001-05:00

Fragments

I tell myself
Don’t
remind Me
you are gone

Lies are good

But then I want to see you as
If
You are
But you’re not

Truth is bad

Allison Whittenberg is a poet and novelist (LIFE IS FINE, SWEET THANG,
HOLLYWOOD AND MAINE and TUTORED all from Random House). She lives in Philadelphia.

Michael Mc Aloran - Three Poems

2011-08-02T19:17:00.001-05:00

#12

Ashen burning ash
Of silence

Winds without
Malice

The eyes drained

A sudden gust
Of excrement

At the pitch of elegant fields
Of bloody dew

Sound/ lapse of/ sound
Shrouded

Pulse of the sky
Pyre of these red raw bones

#5-

Ash
Bloody ash

Dread
Lapse unto
None

But spoken
Head or
Spiral rapture

Seethe
Spit of the sun’s
Emptiness

Dredge never to
Retrace

#6

Scar
Headless altar

At the foot of
Spasm

Walls of laughter
Idle shadows following

Head of candied
Night air

Skinned ashen
Pageantry

Of ghost limbs

Youssef Alaoui-Fdili - One Poem

2011-08-01T12:50:00.001-05:00

Pointed—That Beam of Light

That beam of light upon your face
reveals the blush of summer gone from it.
And now, treatment for a reflective era:

Evening.
She creeps over the trees
and valleys on multiple legs
of brittle iron poles.

An expanding barracks
not fluttering
but oozing in mile-high wafts
and we are pointed toward her
hurtling into the East.

Emerging evening;
a cold blanket with rusted edges,
replacing daylight
with a fickle promise of dreams.

Instead,
she fills the sleeping gulf
with ideas of living acts
never committed, never actualized,
hardly remembered.

Finally alone,
this is the river we speak to—
Grey, broad, shallow, leafless, birds leaving it,
and bridged.
An expanse best fled from.
A kept secret. A mute response.

And then above,
the sirens spiral around it.
Just beyond the periphery
lies your rock island,
a glowing carnelian outpost.
The final gateway into spring.

Youssef Alaoui-Fdili is a Moroccan-American Latino. His family and heritage are an endless source of inspiration for his varied, dark, spiritual and carnal writings. He has an MFA in Poetics from New College of California. His poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, a Swiss publication called Poems Niederngasse, Stark Raving Normal, Oakland’s Literary Zine Tea Party, the New Times of San Luis Obispo and San Francisco’s Cherry Bleeds. He is also a founding member of the East Bay writers group “9st.”

Ben Burr - Two Poems

2011-07-31T19:11:00.004-05:00

Experiments with Meditation (14)

I am too easily bored
to ever become devout.
My mind races, searches
among the eons, collecting
the breath of each generation,
recycling through my body,
turning the beautiful energy
into some cosmic mindscape.
And it is in this world,
this world of allowance,
that the subdued light
of being can be seen
in its total, vibrant magnificence.

Untitled

Sitting in the silence
of my thought-filled mind,
the little prayers gather,
waiting in line for consideration.
Each one, either white or black,
breathes through my lungs
out into the gray world.
The conflict of sin
pounds in a timid heart
as if some far off angel
whispers my name.

Ben Burr lives in East Nashville, Tennessee.

Marcin Majkowski - One Poem

2011-07-31T19:01:00.004-05:00

THE ROYAL COLOR

I’ve met a girl
she had
golden panties
looks
extraordinary
Strings of a kind
as of name
poor
but also
profuse in contrary

This color's royal
every dog
has
its day
I’m surprised
I’m not
a sovereign
but
I got it for free
today

I can’t hide
my joy
right away
I begin to
to taste the feast
I’m overawed
with color
though
I’m willing
to start DIY
at least

The strings are off
I’m venturing
into the unknown
dungeons’ bliss
To suddenly notice
the golden color
being
just an ordinary
piss

Marcin Majkowski is an accomplished, 36 year old performance/spoken word poet/writer from Poland. His official website is www.depechmaniac.pl.

Craig Shay - Three Poems

2011-07-29T18:26:00.004-05:00

House Sitting

She dreams of plum colored skies.
She says, that when you open a human’s mind
you see what is inside a pomegranate.
I sat in her apartment, looking through
a thousand oversized art books.
The lights on the wall brightened,
natives from an African painting
came to life and we had a feast in her bedroom.
We roasted boar, sang and fell asleep.
I enjoyed that day playing hooky from reality.
I closed my eyes and thought about the books
written in blood and when the wise men
returned from the kitchen
I thought I saw angels and spacemen
outside the window,
landing atop the roof
of an Manhattan apartment.

Waiting for the Flood

Water floods
the streets

glass high-rises
are melting

I am sitting
in a room
with a thousand clocks –

They tick slowly

Dripping
water
can be so melodic

The voices
forming
new words –

Finding
new time
as one clock
expires
it makes
me smile

my soul
sings
on the paper

it is not a clock

I am sitting
on the roof porch
with the junkman

wind chimes
are his
children laughing

His wife
is inside

her fever
causes
the ice to melt –

His cigar smoke
rises
and forms
clouds
in the shape
of a thousand
stray cats.

Cognitive Dissidence

There are nights
I almost forget
theses shackles
on my hands and feet.

I almost feel free –

Then I remember
the streets are still on fire
and there are no firemen.

I watch years pass
into madness,
as the fires rage to destroy.

No one talks about the rising smoke clouds
engulfing the sky and blotting out the sun.

No one is ready to confront the avalanche
of violence and fear.

No one believes it is going to destroy us.

Most recently Craig Shay’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in: The Bitter Oleander, Counterexample Poetics, the Sound of Poetry Review, Clockwise Cat, the
Smoking Poet, Skidrow Penthouse, and the Bicycle Review.

Kevin Ridgeway - One Poem

2011-07-27T10:27:00.004-05:00

Now in Glorious Technicolor!

She dances a fragile frantic waltz,
her knees quivering in and screaming out
as the chain linked turntable speakers crackle
out songs from the older, weirder America
of bloodshed behind smiling cartoon iconography
and soft shoe starvation emitting demons
from the pores of our dusty predecessors
and the atomic bombs her parents
and my grandparents
hidden behind closed doors.

The dance floor is a continent of yellow shag
jetting out and massaging
the spaces in between our bare toes,
the dark voice wailing from the grooves
of the vinyl croaked by blinding moonshine
followed by the pale yodels of ghosts,
faded pangs from eroded history,
you can hear the wood bend, thump and break
in this bellyaching acoustic grief.

She jerks and jostles as I steady her
in my mannequin arms.
We’ve run away from home
on a boxcar of modern day hobo irony
to a shady California bungalow
draped in tweed and flannel,
costumes stolen from fashion plates
rolling in their pioneer graves.
Her brand new anklet glimmers in
our black and white frame
surrounded by homeless old books
and cats with opium gazes.

The record ends,
a carnival packed up and smoldering out of town,
one drunken collective sea of long dead voices
running on recorded fumes;
the decadent lights and barks fading in the distance,
these long gone lonesome voices
eclipse all that is being unspoken by the living
as we wait for the next miracle
of outdated multimedia time travel
to whisk us away again
from the falsehood of this gutless
contemporary non-fiction.

Jessica Provencio - One Poem

2011-07-27T10:09:00.005-05:00

Warm Broken Cookies

i sleep under the citibank atm
where the machine warms the sidewalk
people step over me
on their way to overdraw their accounts
to pay to overstep their boundaries

i was pretty once when i arrived on the scene
pretty smile pretty clothes pretty face
after a year i am invisible
dirty shabby dingy
i give the pretty people sore eyes

the last time i went to get tested
the overworked volunteer nurse looked worried
she asked me to wait while she asked the doctor something
i snuck out the side door of the clinic and never went back

the night shift man at mrs fields who speaks broken english
gives me warm broken cookies sometimes
but lately i’ve been too sick to keep anything down
and they only make me want to cry
they remind me of the hallmark idea of home

i know now that it is a home that i will never know
i won’t live that long
they have cocktails that cost thousands
that are rumored to stave off the inevitable or save
all i want is a cocktail that will make me numb

they come spilling out of the clubs at 2am
pretty performers in a perfect show
laughing about who they will take home
i want someone to take me home
i’ve never had a home

Jess lives in Los Angeles with her wife, four cats, and three tarantulas. She is a supervisor at a coffee shop and a substitute English teacher. Her goal is to get tattoos in as many languages as possible.

Robert Laughlin - One Poem

2011-07-26T10:52:00.003-05:00

As a Boy

as a boy
I could recognize a nightmare in progress for what it was

I would pedal my bike furiously
trying to escape a gang of bullies
who kept gaining though they were on foot

or couldn’t find my way out of a strange neighborhood
the streets leading in having vanished

and a part of my mind still awake and reasoning
would say
This cannot be happening
Make yourself wake up

and I did
and I was safe in my darkened bed

an enviable talent
being able to make irrational phantasms evaporate at will

but in time it was a talent lost
I know

for recently I tried my best to wish away
something too horrible
and too wildly improbable to be real

I strained and strained to wake myself
and opened my eyes

God damn it
the front page didn’t change a bit.

Robert Laughlin lives in Chico, California. Two of his short stories are Million Writers Award Notable Stories, and his novel, Vow of Silence, was favorably reviewed by Publishers Weekly. His website is at www.pw.org/content/robert_laughlin.

Paul David Adkins - One Poem

2011-07-25T15:02:00.002-05:00

Abandoned Garment Factory,Deferiet, NY

Chain link fence and knot of gate
hem the husk of steel and brick.
Hung every thirty feet --

No trespassing.

Crows stitch the loading dock and louvers,
clasp twig batting in their beaks.

Plywood sheets drape doors.

The flagpole halyard
rings its slender bell,
a locomotive’s ghost.

The dockside rails
are paved.

A water tank has bled its rust from every bolt.

A pigeon threads a window
like a quick needle.

Paul David Adkins grew up in South Florida and lives in New York, a rare breed of reverse snowbird.

Barbara Sue Mink Spalding - One Haiku

2011-07-24T21:09:00.006-05:00

The Curl of the Fern

Misty rain garden--
The peace of summer with the
Still, deepening green.

Barbara Sue Mink Spalding lives in Orange County, California, with an address in Westminster, she is currently homeless, looking for a place to live and for work. Barbara writes op-eds, poetry, and short stories. She is a member of the Sons of Italy, Hollywood Lodge, NAMI, and contributes to the October 22 Coalition. She's 52.

Joseph Saling - Two Poems

2011-07-24T20:31:00.005-05:00

The Last Day of His Life

The last day of his life began
like all the rest except
he found some pills above the sink
and took them down to stare
into their white infinity
then said out loud, Why white?

The last day of his life he packed lunch for his children
and stood waiting at the door while each one filed by
taking the brown bag from his hand and smiling
as he admonished them to study hard.

The last day of his life he kissed
his wife and told her not to worry.

Getting in the car he drove
until he couldn't be seen from the house
then followed the long narrow path through the field to the beach
with its white sand that seemed to stretch into infinity
and sat there watching white clouds disturb
the sky with shapes that had no permanence,
with weight that wasn't there,
and wondered once more Why white?

The Letter Writer

The tip of the pen had worn away
and scratched at the page,
making him shudder the way hard chalk
scraping on a blackboard once did.
Still, just one more letter to write.

One more letter. No one writes letters anymore,
not with a pen with a broken tip.

It would be easier on a computer --
e-mail. Just hit send, and it's done before
there's time to think, do I want to send this?
Computers are safer. They protect
him the way his own handwriting cannot.
But his computer's in a dark
room inside an empty house.

A room void of other breath but
his own. He thinks he'd rather hear
the scratching. At least here, men
with great rings of keys pass back and forth
with great practiced ceremony,

pushing brooms, wearing rags
on their belts, coughing phlegm. Not pretty.
Not like a friend
would be.
Not what a dog or cat
could be. But still he prefers

the company of their loneliness
to such silent dependency,
the smell of ammonia and polish to
sour milk and rotting grapes
behind the beer in the fridge at home.

He wants to like this place. This time.
But he can't. The letter's unfinished and
the pen won't let him. He thinks
a new pen, one that didn't scrape
but rolled as easy as the surf

would make this place perfect.
The words would spill out the way milk
Leaks from a mother's breast. We've
become too private, he writes and then
throws the paper away because

that's all there is that's left to be.

Joseph Saling is a writer who lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. His volume of poetry A Matter of Mind was published in 2004 by FootHills Publishing in 2004. His work has appeared widely in journals such as The Formalist, The Raintown Review, Pivot, Poet Lore, and Birmingham Poetry Review, andOhio Journal.

Raud Kennedy - Two Poems

2011-07-16T11:12:00.002-05:00

Making My Own Acquaintance

I used to smoke, crave it, enjoy it.
Now it’s something people do
who are ambivalent about life,
not sure if they want to live or die.
I used to drink a lot.
It was the high and low of my day.
Now it’s what people do who are in pain.
Their pain has taken on a life of its own
and needs to be fed and cared for
like a lost soul they’ve brought home from the bar.
I used to feel sad and needed that sadness
to have something to escape from
because without it I’d be left alone
experiencing an uncomfortable silence
with a stranger.

Afghanistan

In bed, prolonging the moments
before pushing back the covers.
The voice on NPR, a reporter in Afghanistan,
refers to the spring fighting season
as if he’s announcing the opening
of ski season at Mt. Hood Meadows.
I brush my teeth, minty fresh, extra whitener.
Death tolls from suicide bombings.
Toweling off after showering, it’s total US casualties,
a number that could be the population figure
of a small city. A city of dead young men and women.
The refreshing lather lifts my beard
as my triple bladed razor shaves my face kissable smooth.
Tell me again why we are there while I am here.

Raud Kennedy is a writer and dog trainer in Portland, Oregon. To learn about his most recent work, Portland, a collection of short stories, please visit www.raudkennedy.com

James Piatt - Three Poems

2011-07-13T12:28:00.005-05:00

Sand Blown War

Scarlet dawn painted upon bloody faces,
icy winds over frozen white sand scars their minds,
bombs burn their flesh and sear their bones,

the agony of screams echo across the land,
thunderous salvos of hot lead scream in hot winds,
muted thunder of the war is heard in the far hills,

torn bodies are piled like wooden soldiers,
bloody and erect, no longer able to bend,
he who once lived now torn and lifeless,

he who once held another in his arms,
the man-child once held by his mother,
can no longer feel without his arms:

Letters written to his wife and children
telling of a hunger to be safe at home,
are sent by the others who lived:

The words and paragraphs smother
those who sadly sit alone in their grief,
as flag covered coffins march alone:

Fat pundits sit in their opulence
promoting the sons and daughters of others
to be slaughtered in the sand blown wars,

bankers and corporation CEOs planning
their stealth, while gathering gold and green trinkets,
hiding under plastic smiles, and glib euphemisms.

Flag Covered Coffins

Whence comes
the song for war’s
blood,
that strident music of
Death
carried,
inside blowing sands
of a desolate and
alien land?
Where are
the beautiful petals
that perfumed
gentle Valleys and
Ocean shores?
Where is the
aroma which tenderly
caressed our senses
with scents of roses?
I now listen in sorrow
to haunted cries of
broken,
tearful women
wearily carrying
their death wail
inside
hungering souls.
They sob under
screaming skies of hate
where ghostly ghouls
rise in
coral clouded
morns, and sing
arias of expedient
death.
Mothers and lovers
shriek loudly
inside their minds
to the loved ones
experiencing
the gory
destruction of
battle.
They pray for
a safe return,
but in the end
whimper a sigh
of bereavement,
silently watching
in agony
the sight of
flag covered coffins
arriving amid the
eerie paleness of
dark evenings.
When will we
learn
there is no
honor,
no glory
or truth,
no justification for
war?
When will our
Love for each other
Outweigh
Our hate for
Each other?

Should Anyone Worry

If no enchantment is found in our poems,
to entice the full moon from a far distance;
if a Narcissus cannot stay the whole year round,
in spite of its delightful aroma and beautiful bloom,
should anyone worry?

If hearts like ours, do not have the potency to grasp
a shining dream, nor thoughts pleasant and effortless;
if nothing can be seized for love or God;
if kisses cannot move a lover’s heart,
should anyone worry?

If the wasp should sting a blossom to death,
for one drop of honey for its hive;
if the falcon should break its airy plunge,
in addition, lose its life forever while diving,
should anyone worry?

If death is found on a shore, far away from home,
sadness clings to our hearts, and passions go longing;
if the lover’s moon grows fainter in the skies, while soldier’s
Vvnture from their doorsteps and never return,
should anyone worry?

If this weary world becomes forever changed
after this decade, and gets constantly grayer, colder,
nearer, to the motionlessness from whence it arrived;
if belief itself becomes paler, stiller, more bitter,
should anyone worry?

If tears dry up, and mirth becomes bizarre,
and if a soul mistrusts itself and weakens;
since men will be men and will never change,
moreover, because of this, will always fail,
should anyone worry?

And if the colorful flowers become a colorless pall
around our fresh graves when we cross over the edge,
moreover, after we have departed, if the spark falls short,
and passions devour the absurd world to its center,
should anyone worry?

James earned his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, and a doctorate from Brigham Young University. He has had over one hundred and twenty poems of different styles published in dozens of print and electronic poetry magazines, journals and anthologies.

Sirjana Singh - One Poem

2011-07-12T12:01:00.003-05:00

What You Want to Know

I have a face, I can show you
I have an emotion, I can let it grow on you
I have a smile, I can sprinkle over
or let's just face the darkness
and you will know everything...

Sun wakes up from its tiring slumber,
I rise from the ashes with the first light
I open my eyes, I open my eyes,
I open my eyes..
and then we stare into the the darkness
and the world has light.

What do you want to know about me?
The slow steps I take every night
twinkle in the sky;
you can follow me around,
or be amazed at the sight.

The stillness of night, I have braided in my hair.
The mystery is the color of my lips,
the eyes that you want to read are
already speaking their story,
there is nothing left to do
for you here...

Let me go,
the sun is leaving,
I'll see you on the other side,
or lets just stare into the darkness,
you will know everything.
and there will be light...
you decide!

Sirjana Singh has a Masters in Organisational Psychology from The University of Waikato in New Zealand, loves reading the poetry of Pablo Neruda, Rasul Gamzatov and John Keats and enjoy dancing and painting.

CL Bledsoe - Two Poems

2011-07-05T11:34:00.003-05:00

Old Man’s Face

The old man’s face creases like crumpled paper.
There are words between the lines
but they make no sound when read. The smell
of salt. The taste of cologne and feces. His hands
scrape your arm like fingers on stained glass
as he tries to catch your attention. I am that man.
This is my face, dripping hairs, graying
in the fading light. Delilah couldn’t bring me
to the library anymore. Delilah won’t
save me. She’s got to take the kids to soccer. I
am not that man. How could I be?

The long end of day stumbles just
as it crests the hill for all to see. I am not
dead. I will not die. There’s too much to do.
Delilah, forgive me all my foolish trespasses,
the time I farted in bed and held the covers over
your head. The skin of my face doesn’t hang, it
expands, balloon-fat and soft. It fills with helium
so my thoughts drift ever upward.

Willpower

The shrink asked if I knew who I was, how I got
there, so I gave directions but couldn't remember
the exit off I 40. He said a quarter
of patients commit suicide immediately
after receiving their test results,
another 6 percent in a few months. Most
drop out before getting results, many die
from drunk driving, drug use,
etc. He asked if I had suicidal thoughts, I said
no, not anymore. When I was
younger, but I walked away from those
like that time I came to visit, when
we were still dating; I left Greg sitting
in his Bronco at the airport breathing in
the smell of my last cigarette, watching me
distance myself from cheap deaths, theatrics,
simplicity.

CL Bledsoe is the author of the young adult novel, Sunlight, two poetry collections, _____(Want/Need), and Anthem, and a short story collection called Naming the Animals. A poetry chapbook, Goodbye to Noise, is available online at www.righthandpointing.com/bledsoe. A minichap, Texas, was published by Mud Luscious Press.He’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize 3 times. He blogs at Murder Your Darlings, http://clbledsoe.blogspot.com Bledsoe has written reviews for The Hollins Critic, The Arkansas Review, American Book Review, The Pedestal Magazine, and elsewhere.

Bruce McRae - Three Poems

2011-07-03T13:22:00.002-05:00

Hide-Away

The secret world of an instep.
The secret world singing in a ditch,
a drop of blood in my sundae,
the unseen just itching for an argument.

A world of secrets going unnoticed,
except for the stench of mystery.
With it’s own vague codes and languages.
The sense that something is missing,
something small but very important.
A moving form throwing shadows down
like a dollar or a debt.
An all-encompassing silence.

The secret world in letterboxes
and behind drawn curtains.
A world inside the real stuff
of meat and potatoes,
its dark lights and darker passwords,
the weight of its hidden precepts.

This is what you hear in your cold wet bed –
the bell of a transitive planet.

The Noble Gases

The voice that is dry leaves and plush essences.
A voice from the dreamworld warning it can’t be done.
Time sulking under the willows.

I still hear the wind around the door of your name,
pushing and pulling the snowfelt evening,
delivering its parcels, pining for Phoebe Reggio,
bemoaning the dullard in me.

I can still hear your voice and the doves’ language,
speaking the river’s lingo and cant,
insisting insisting . . .

The tongue of rare elements and noble gases,
small-talk gnawing on its sweetened straw.
The voice lost among fields of cane,
a few grains remaining
in Mr. Mnemonics’ storehouse of plenty.

Where did you go when you went there?
Voice like a swallow’s swoop and ship’s lantern.
A voice pitched like a memory jarred.
Like a storm coming
and the heart’s sailor longing for safe harbour.

Heavy Weather

The snow in your life.
The snow behind a cupboard
and contained in a velveteen bag.
A chandelier of delicate snowflakes.

The snow that comes without winter,
falling up and up, the theoretical sky
opening its doors wide in welcome.

The red snows of the Sahara
coming to rest in a Bournemouth car park.
Blue snows of a high fever,
your shallow breaths in windrows.

The snow for the pauper-poets
drifting in and out of reality,
reality shifting its insubstantial cargo.

Jungle-snow. Forests of squalls.
Blizzards slinking out of Libya.
The snows condemned by the hanging-judge,
by the wild-haired jury.

Here, the snow with bite, with fangs,
with a kiss as sweet as the golden asp’s.
Now, the blowing snow of my words,
and you sweeping the path.
Keeping the way clear.

Canadian Bruce McRae has had almost 600 publications in the past 12 years. Originally from Niagara Falls, he has moved extensively, living in London for 18 years and currently residing on Salt Spring Island, BC. A musician, who has recorded and toured, many of his poems have been set to music receiving airplay in the UK, U.S., Canada and Australia. His first collection, The So-Called Sonnets, published by Silenced Press of Ohio, is available now. Website: www.bpmcrae.com

Jason Ryberg - Five Poems

2011-06-29T13:35:00.002-05:00

Consulting the Stars with Mark Hennessy

And then there are those
wide-open October nights
out there on the high seas
of the lower Mid-west,

and nothing but stars stars stars.

And maybe you’ve wandered
away from the fire with a friend or two
and a bottle of some not dissimilar
distillation of heat and radiance (to keep
the Universal Engine turning over, of course),

and Time, that supremely indifferent
retriever and reducer of all things
to their least divisible units
seems to have momentarily halted
in the tracks of its ceaseless stalking
of what we so self-centrically
imagine to be its sweetest, juiciest prey.

And a Greek chorus of coyotes
is commenting on the day’s events
from the next county over.

And a truck somewhere out beyond
the horizon’s line of diminishing return
blows a long, sorrowful solo.

And our phones and clocks
(those little sycophantic servants
and advisers and grand co-conspirators,
as well, no doubt) have been given
their first night off in who knows how long.

So, if you want to speak to someone,
present company should more than do.

And if, for some reason,
you find you need to know
the Time’s current whereabouts...

well, you’ll have to consult the stars.

Charles Simic Sitting in the Cheap Seats of my Dreams

It would appear to be
either a rundown vaudevillian/
burlesque theater, Poughkeepsie
or Buffalo, NY, circa 19-twenty-something,

or maybe an old, black and white,
“recorded live before a studio
audience” style television program;

part “Honeymooners,”
“Days Of Our Lives,” and
German expressionist cinema
consisting almost entirely of various
stock caricatures and other tragi-comic
grotesqueries of the perverse
projectile vomiting hyper-dramatic
dialogue at no one in particular.

They orate, pontificate
and gesticulate, magnificently,
without ever seeming to be aware
of each other’s existence.

One of them is dressed as a World War I
Prussian Military commander, complete with
tall, shiny boots, walrussy handle bar
and singularly spiked helmet.

Another is, most likely, supposed to be
somebody’s booga-booga idea of an ancient
tribal shaman or witchdoctor.

Still another, wearing a bra and panties
and a thin silk cord running from his neck to the heel
of the high-heel shoe on his only remaining foot,
masturbates, dreamily, into the long shadow
of his nightly near-death excursion.

A chorus of mutts and street urchins
waits, attentively, for its cue (or a scrap
of food to fight over, perhaps).

And way in the back,
in the darkest and cheapest of cheap seats,
the lone, cigar smoking audience member
smacks out a slow and clamorous

CLAP!
CLAP!
CLAP!
CLAP!

Drunk Directing Traffic at the Intersection of Time and Space

No sooner had I lowered myself
down into that dark well
of ghost echos and distant whale squeak
than I was the poor boy of every
sad blues and honky-tonk song,

thumb out, on the Lost Highway
and a long, long way from home,

a lonesome stranger trying to
hitch a ride to ever-stranger lands
(and other Parts Unknown, as well).

I was Hank and Lefty,
Kerouac and Cassidy,
Quixote and Sancho.

I wore the fabled hubcap
diamond-star halo and red shoes
that were the envy of every angel
(and devil alike).

I made mid-night raids
on The Garden of Earthly Delights.

I stole Death’s pale, raggedy horse
and sold it to a traveling gypsy circus.

I directed traffic at the intersection
of Time and Space.

I rode bitch between a mega-church minister
and a street-corner preacher.

I got drunk on nine kinds of hellfire
and nearly died in a duel
over a one-legged ballerina.

I called out to you through
the dark winter forest of static
at the end of the A.M. radio dial,
waking you in the middle of the night.

If not for the alarm clock
pinching my ear with its
sharp, bony fingers,

I might not have ever
made it back.

Scenes from 39th St., Pt. 1

The Poet With The Hole In His Throat
was busy soaking copies of "Black Like Me"
in gasoline, shouting "I told you crackers
what I'd do, the next time I saw one of these things!"
And the Eastern Academic Elitist Poet
(from (eastern-most) Hoboken) was
attempting to set Tennyson's "Thanotopsis"
to jews harp, tone box and oboe.
And the ferocious Celtic/Valkyrie Poet
was feasting on the still beating hearts
of all the fallen poets foolish enough
to have fallen for her Celtic siren song.
And Gods Angry Poet was casting out
the under-cover Homeland Security Man
with Lillies Of The Field and various
lyrical incantations and the street preachers
were ladeling snake oil from a fifty gallon drum
while some faintly unwholesome character
claiming to be the latest incarnation of the Bodhisatva
was saying to everyone and anyone on the street
"PULL MY FINGER! PULL MY FINGER!"
And then the ten-thousand myriad archetypes
became strangely quiet and still, the stars all stopped,
momentarily, in their places and the angels
and demons ceased their square-dancing on the heads
of pins and ten-penny nails, everywhere.
And still the Lonely Backwoods Bukowski-
Wanna-Be Poet sat there in a dank, sub-basement
corner of his imagination, mindlessly ringing
wind chimes made from throwing stars, winding
and re-winding the ancient mechanical cricket of his art.

Standing at the Intersection of Critical Mass and Event Horizon with Tom Wayne and John Deuser, 5:47 AM (or, "Hey Man, is that an Accordian I'm Hearing?")

A million fish wash up dead
in a California harbor.
10, 000 cows keel over in Vietnam.

Thousands of Starlings, Turtle Doves
and Red Wing Blackbirds drop from the sky
in Italy, Sweden, South Dakota.

But elsewheres (and despite it all),
we’ve still managed to put in
another long (and more than respectable) night
of consorting with spirits and keeping
the Universal Kundalini humming
at that slightly heightened pitch (of radians
per reciprocal seconds) which has been
rumored to induce an "informed
euphoria" of sorts.

And now the early morning streets
(here in mid-town KC/MO, 5:47 AM)
are strangely Frisco/Portland-foggy and deserted
like one of those old-school/bad dream/
“where-did-everybody-go” sci/fi movies
from our paranoid, cold-war era past.

Or so it would seem
if not for the all-night diner with its
purple neon “OPEN” sign in the window
and the street light on the corner;

a peach-tinted glow hovering above us
like a stationary UFO whose (only mildly
bemused) occupants are, no-doubt, wondering
if these three zombified monkey-boys
and their fucked up little planet
are even worth the effort.

And from somewhere
deep inside the fog,

a strangely musical

wheezing...

Jason Ryberg is the author of seven books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box of loose papers that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel and a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. He is a also an aspiring b-movie actor. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri with a rooster named Red and a billygoat named Giuseppe. Feel free to look up his skirt
at jasonryberg.blogspot.com/.

Craig Eldon Reishus - Two Poems

2011-06-28T14:13:00.002-05:00

Your Move

The partygoers
who had deposited
their furs and mantles on the bed
inspected them severely
once the door finally unlocked
and out trundled Dylan and Tricia,
deliciously disheveled and coyly deadpanning.

Here, here.

You can’t spend the whole of your rock star life
giving fifteen-year-old girls heart palpitations –
at some point you have to rush in and marry old money.

Dylan takes Tricia.
It's like sacrificing a horse.

Before Turning on the Simpsons

It is Jan's curious belief
that the universe is shaped like a giant enema bag,
yet was created for some purpose other than giving enemas.

For a long while there was a very sober UFO to watch.
But then it turned into a fairly dizzy hot air balloon.

Craig Eldon Reishus lives south of Munich north of the Alps and is an anti-nuclear activist, anti-night club piano player, all-around pro webGuy, and translator of a broad score of films and books. He originates from Fort Smith, Arkansas. www.reishus.de

James H. Duncan - Four Poems

2011-06-27T20:59:00.003-05:00

Dust Motes of the Universe

desperate cog
of the great transmission
failure
let your teeth slip free
let them grind and break
pearly white or steel
they are not yours
and another set may yet
grow through
wake
silent rebellion
against the hurling riptide
a single drop of water turning
against the maw
is all it takes to catch
the gulls unaware
feeding in a frenzy of fire

and a beak will snap on stone
and a stain will mar the sun

and a volcano will forgive
and a clock will pause
before
gripping its face with both hands
and screaming out a dream
to end time as we
dust motes of the universe
know it

gears will slip
waves will end
a snowflake
in the desert sand

wake from the failure
and another life
may yet
grow through

Kentucky Gentleman

Cruz and I used to have this competition
where we would fill half a bucket with
hot soapy water and add some pine-scented
floor cleaner, and fill half another bucket
with hot soapy water and add Kentucky
Gentleman whiskey, and we couldn’t
tell the god damn difference once the kitchen
floor was mopped, so we did the bathroom
that way too, then killed the bottle and half
another while sitting in the living room
without any air conditioning and all the windows
open, and one of the other roommates had a dog
that pissed at the sight of air, much less anything
that moved, and that fucker flinched and whimpered
and pissed all over our clean Kentucky Gentleman
floor, so we sent it outside and slammed the door,
but when the other roommate got home, she made us
go find the beast, her beloved, and we walked
down the trailer-home streets until we got to the
Silver Fox roadhouse, a cement cockroach box with
honky tonk on the juke and a slanted pool table
and we’d drink until the cowboys kicked us out
and thanks to Christ that little dog was sitting
on the porch when we got home, though we were
fresh out of Kentucky Gentleman, so the house smelled
of fresh pine for a week until we got paid again

Men

men, upon being
thrust together and bound
by day-to-day work
will inevitably form circles
to tell their tales and bark laughter
at one another, spin their web
of protective joviality
to save them from the pitfall
of a day of honest labor
a heroic defense against the hands
that batter them from the clock:
the hour, the minute, the glare of
the passing dock manager
or senior editor
or maintenance supervisor
or lieutenant
or president of the united states

all men do this, fight the good fight
against the manacles of the time-card
all men, save for the dead
and those who don’t are already gone
up the ladder or six feet below
where the time card punches itself
and the smoke breaks last all night long

Sleep Tight

can you scream like that?
can you break the night apart like a
hell scar tearing open motorcycle
insomniac ravening through
your street and down your stunned
silent eyes staring out from your bed?
does it make you remember?
do images of what you were flash
before your eyes when you dream, and do
you see how much like steel your eyes held when
it all poured out onto the floor
as you gutted yourself in the rain?
hear the dog barking out there?
hear the cats fighting for blood?
if you take away the moon, will you
recognize your soul a little easier
when you look out the screen door
into everything that dies when the sun
sinks someplace you’d rather be?
can you slap a bandage over your wounds
fast enough to stop the terror you feel
when you look in the mirror
just a little too long?
do you feel surrounded when you
are alone? do ghosts follow you as
you pace the wooden floors?
did you hear that? downstairs?
the back door? the front?
or maybe on the roof?
will you recognize your soul
when it comes knocking?
or better yet, will it recognize
you?

James H Duncan is a tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure. The editor of Hobo Camp Review, James considers himself a student of the road, where you’ll find him in late-night diners, local dive bars, and wandering train station platforms minding his own business. Apt, Red Fez, Reed Magazine, Underground Voices, Poetry Salzburg Review, and The Battered Suitcase, among many others, have welcomed his work. More at http://jameshduncan.blogspot.com

Subhankar Das - One Poem

2011-06-23T23:11:00.004-05:00

Flowerpots for Bukowski

I want to pee in the sink.
But you cannot do that.
Why not?
I will pee right now in your sink.
It is not possible for you,
why don’t you understand
it is a male thing.
I will launch a protest
Listen love, why don’t you do something
more creative, use the flowerpots instead.

Subhankar Das owns and operates Grafiti Kolkata, based in India. He also owns a bookstore named Shilalipi. His work has appeared extensively in print and online. He has a new book forthcoming from Virgogray Press.

John Grochalski - Five Poems

2011-06-20T06:59:00.003-05:00

Diodes

jack introduces himself to me again
we meet again and again
every time that i come in here
jack will interrupt a conversation
with some anecdote from his life
that has nothing to do with the topic at hand
then he’ll tell a story just as arbitrary
when he finishes he’ll look at me and ask
what’s your name?
and i’ll tell him, wishing that i could give him
a different name each time
but i’m known in here now
b.j. tells me that i’m a regular
i’ve been anointed and this is where i belong
today jack is talking about
herman hesse, siddhartha , the buddha
he tells us that jesus was a big fan of the buddha
only the bible won’t tell you that he is
i’m wondering what other kind of
inside information jack has on jesus christ
it keeps me from the realization
that these barflies are the only friends
that i’ve got in this world
but i’d rather b.j. and his whiskey and beer
jack with his pints of chardonnay and ice
than anything more intimate
because a man can still talk when he needs to
because in a few moments
ivan will start dancing to hot tuna
and bill the bartender
will drop his laptop on the floor because he’s drunk
jack will take a long pull on his chardonnay
and tell us that laptops are full of diodes
and diodes are what keep computers from getting viruses
b.j. will laugh and and down the last of his pint
diodes, he’ll say, yeah, jack, it’s gotta be the diodes
keeping all of those viruses away
and jack will feel smart
he’ll tell me that this time he’s going to remember my name
then jeopardy will come on the television
and no one will have to think about anything else
friends or names
because one of the categories will be major league baseball
and we’re all intimate with that topic in this joint.

Here is Where Nowhere Begins

caught up in the land where
old chinese women
clank recycled bottles all night
in the late autumn breeze

where they blare their television sets
through thin painted walls

and dumb bitches have
pointless conversations
underneath the streetlights
by our bedroom window

smoking and shouting into
their cell phones
like pampered little stars

here is where something ends

and we sit on the couch
dead from another eight hours
a shot of scotch in my tea
nothing in yours

taking in the malaise of the night

talking about getting out again

buffalo
pittsburgh
cleveland
st. louis and denver

we think that maybe california
is where it’s at

but california is broke too

we say no
to new orleans and san francisco
because we don’t want to taint them
with the cruel regularities of life

we want to keep them crystal
in our minds

los angeles
san diego

minneapolis
milwaukee
even london, paris, and madrid

this is fun

a momentary escape from the lackluster
and excruciating now

but this is unsustainable fantasy
and we know it

because the clock is ticking toward
another day

and the chinese women
clank bottles and cans
out of vengeance and need

they echo in the night
until they hurt our bones

trucks idle for an eternity

conversations in the cold linger on
and get nowhere

the tea cups empty as they must

we look at each other
with worn-out eyes and thin smiles

and i think

here is where nowhere begins

again

Genius Sits

genius sits
in the bar
orders a pint of bud
figures out
how to try and kill the day
doesn’t think about the job
doesn’t think about
the other faces pulling on nothing
but sits there
thinking about an article
that he read
about cars becoming
the next smart phones
the ability to update
your facebook
order groceries
do anything from the dashboard
and wonders how
long it will be before
people start dying because of this
in grisly accidents
thinks that car companies
are the new vehicles for genocide
financed via government bailouts
looks around and wonders
how in the fuck the world
got like this
how he can get out
thinks about selling off
all of his shit
buying one of those
smart phone cars
driving it to slab city
all the way in the colorado desert
leaving it there to rot
before climbing salvation mountain
to camp out
underneath the stars
that don’t shine
here in the city
stars that don’t do anything
but twinkle
the uncomplicated past.

They Will Ask Me
--after the regional elections
in spain

they will ask me
if i brought them anything
back from spain

i will joke with them

i will tell them
that i brought them postcards
and magnets

t-shirts and shot glasses

only i left them
sitting in the souvenir stores

i will tell them
that i brought myself back from spain
and isn’t that good enough?

only that will be some kind of lie
because i don’t feel the same

i surely don’t think the same anymore

they will ask me
why europeans hate us

because they always ask this question

someone will ask me
what the tacos are like in spain
or if they had any cool
cinco de mayo stuff

so i won’t have to answer
the question about why europeans
don’t like americans

i will tell them that europeans
don’t understand americans

why there is no universal health care
here in the states
why the poor vote republican
and try to keep each other down

i will try to explain the terror
of franco that still exists

movement
and the fear of over 20% unemployment

they will tell me
america love it or leave it

i will be inclined to accept the latter

only i’ll stay silent
as they turn away from me to talk
about some celebrity divorce
or the hot new reality show

i’ll think about walking grand via
in the spanish sun

or the protest kids
who were packed 28,000 strong
in the puerta del sol

fighting so hard not to become like us

failing beautifully

but at least they tried

and they will ask me where
i’m going to go next

i will tell them that i don’t know
i simply do not know.

Shitting My Pants in Finnegan’s Irish Pub (madrid)

oscar had been right about the spanish food
only maybe i’d had too much of it

pulpo ala gallega
and albondigas by the plateful

enough tortilla espanola to last a lifetime

all washed down with cold cerveza
or a nice rioja

foods whose names were as
fun to say as they were as good to eat

my wife and i
all over the streets of madrid, chanting

albondigas
albondigas
albondigas

as if we weren’t just walking around shouting

meatballs
meatballs
meatballs

or maybe it was the heat
that hot and dry spanish air

but by the time we made finnegan’s that night
i felt as if i were ready to die

running past the smile of the bartender
who had only last night told oscar that i had a kind face

and down those old wooden stairs to the bathroom
whose caballeros sign i’d ripped off the door two nights earlier

because i was a drunk american in madrid
and it seemed like the thing to do

into that little stall
with the door that didn’t shut
bracing it with my foot hoping no one
would try and come in

sweat pouring down my face
all over me

making a tight shirt feel tighter

caught in the spanish night, looking for release

just one fart i told myself

but it was one fart too many

a burst of shit came before
i had my drawers down

and then there i was
a grown man
a helpless mess in a strange country

shit, i said

not this

not tonight

i stood there bowlegged
foot against that door
music pouring down on me

my wife probably wondering where
in the hell i was

still, somehow i got the jeans off
the ruined drawers
that i had to toss in a corner of the small stall
while i tried to clean myself the best that i could

but that was when the pain came
and i dropped down on that bowl

like an anchor

grunting and moaning

no longer chanting

albondigas
albondigas
albondigas

but instead wondering if maybe there was a god

and if he could see to it
to end my misery as he saw fit

maybe death or something else

the shits came like a river
hissing brown rapids of disgust

the stench was maddening

christ, i thought
first i vomit in the reina sofia and now this?

what else is there for me to do in this country?

the door to bathroom opened
a stranger came in and started coughing

i feel your pain, i said in english
but he did not answer me

he washed his hands and left

i took no offense to this
i was happy to be alone again
to finish doing this terrible deed

i looked over at my soiled underwear

if only i hadn’t farted, i said
as the pain began to subside
if only i’d stuck with american food

mcdonald’s or burger king

the american stomach is conditioned
to handle that kind of bland junk

ah, but the spanish food had called to me
as so many things had in this country

as picasso had
as goya had
as the long endless steps leading to toledo had

i rose from that bowl, wiped,
and surveyed the damage that i had done

still as proud as any man
after a typically good shit

life is funny like that

i pulled up my jeans
and grabbed my drawers
with whatever dignity i could muster

threw them away

washed my hands and took the long walk
back up the wooden steps
to where my wife was waiting for me

one of those sad looks on her face
typically reserved for children and dogs

two cold pints of carlsberg sitting on the table

she said it happens to the best of us
but i just waved her off

i sat down carefully
the unfamiliar sensation of
my balls scrapping off of the stiff denim

i had a good pull on my beer
looked at that portrait of samuel beckett by the door
and shook my head

as we sat there in silence
waiting for oscar to show.

John Grochalski's work has appeared in Carcinogenic Poetry as well as Avenue, Red Fez, Viral Cat, Lit Up, Rusty Truck, Thieves Jargon, Outsider Writers Collective, The Lilliput Review, The Camel Saloon, Yes Poetry, and the Orange Room Review. My short fiction has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Fictionville, Bartleby Snopes, Retort, The Battered Suitcase, The Big Stupid Review, Pequin, The Legendary, Troubadour 21, The Moose & Pussy, and the anthology Living Room Handjob. His column The Lost Yinzer appears quarterly in The New Yinzer (www.newyinzer.com), and he can be found at his blog Winedrunk Sidewalk (www.winedrunksidewalk.blogspot.com). John's book of poems The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out is out via Six Gallery Press, and his book Glass City is out on Low Ghost Press.

Ross Vassilev - One Poem

2011-06-17T01:07:00.003-05:00

Eggs

ask anyone who was ever poor:
eggs are the cheapest food.
we used to eat eggs 2 or 3 times
a week and no matter
how many different ways
of cooking them
you might know
you get sick of them pretty fast.
one time in the supermarket
I saw a woman
with her cart filled all the way to
the top with egg cartons
I guess she was fighting
inflation and
that might seem funny
but war on the poor
is standard business
in America
and if you’re not
on foodstamps
then you’re cutting coupons
at the very least
or maybe shoplifting
and so the “lazy and stupid”
as the rich call us
are multiplying like
flies
and someday
we’re taking over.

Ross Vassilev was born in Bulgaria and now lives in Ohio. He's a poet and the editor of Asphodel Madness 2.0 (http://asphodelmadness.wordpress.com/), his work has appeared extensively throughout the lit underground.

Susan Morgan Bosler - Two Poems

2011-06-13T21:12:00.002-05:00

The Unequal Union

The words flow unto the page
not by mouth but by touch
radiate pools of fiery wisdom
perceived but never enveloped
within the waves of flames of true conviction
wallowing alone in artful blindness.

The temptress or the muse
the writer knows not which
sometimes the spirit of generosity
often the withholder of pseudo-bliss
waiting, always waiting, for a thought
to cross the mind, a deeper lake in which to swim
as she who brings the silver pitcher of clear water
dances elusively, the christening cup held fairly out of reach.

Suffering in the throngs of literary poverty
wanting only to find the drop of truth
within the words that fill the paper
bleeding through the fingers,
thoughts onto the page, either by a trickle or else a hemorrhage.
Which it is, does not matter, only that blood must be shed
before the writer may hope to find, a tiny bit of modest release
a thirst hardly quenched when in a drought of inspiration.

Circus

Down-town but not out
Hear the roar of the street cleaners
It’s nearly six a.m.
The sun’s come up
There's a hazy glow
Cracking through the
In-betweens
Of the glass on stone buildings
Feels like a thousand hours
Have rushed by
But the old clock in the midtown parish
Stopped one day around nine

We no longer set our daily schedule by that clock
We follow the sunrises and the setting suns
Even the moon keeps our tick-tocks
Intact - when it’s dark
Somehow we found our way back to nature
No one remembers how to fix the cogs and the shiny springs
We know about liquor, be it booze or bliss
We know about drugs, snorted or smoked
It’s all sex, sex, sex – but no one knows why
Touch any part but the heart of the one
You go home with
Dare not attach yourself
Too much
To any-body

I found a solution to this dizzy drain
As a steady pounding reverberates through me
By way of the blood’s fury
“Kiss Me Red”
As it travels about my streaming estuaries
Reminding me that the Natives are restless
My brain can’t be made
To
Conform
Not to time or clocks without a heavy infusion
Of extra-strength aspirin chewed to
White bitters
Swallowed in a paste
It’s the goo that renews life
Come morning-time
Waking up, I remember yesterday
But never think about tomorrow
Rustle up some left over sin
Before I powder my nose
The sun’s come up
Or the clock’s right again
It’s time to pound, pound, pound the pavement
Prowl around the steaming streets
To shake hands with this or that devil
Aren’t we all just trying to get by? While
Looking
for
Distractions.

Susan Morgan Bosler is a poet, writer and colomunist. She has had works published over the years in several anthologies, has been the publisher and editor of Spirithunter Ezine and is currently hard at work on her first Romantic/Horror Novel.

Joseph Victor Milford - One Poem

2011-06-10T10:49:00.002-05:00

White Expanse Of Wave

Language, you ocean,
I wrote of you.

I wrote ocean once.
Cradled endlessly, erased you.

I dipped a ladle in;
Came back with civil slitherings.

I dipped a ladle in again;
It came back melted to the handle.

Ocean, you language.
I stick my stick into you.

It was smelted by blacksmiths.
Once, in your slither things,

I made new wither things. Feathered things.
We were workshopping, university testing

These slitherings, testing your ocean
Viscosity to make better ladles

So that others never venture
To you, you ocean, eel-infested mother,

Majestic you, coral-scape
With that math un-mapped

We make you last
With words we just record

All the bloodthirsty sharks--
But really poetry is just making new

And incredible ladles
Scoops, dozers, plastic upon plastic spoons

Ways to measure infinites into recipes

Joseph Victor Milford is an english professor, radio host, father, and guitarist living in small-town Georgia. His first book, Cracked Altimeter, was published at BlazeVox Books in 2010. He is known by many hunters in his zip code as the literary Sasquatch.

Ian C. Smith - One Poem

2011-06-09T20:50:00.001-05:00

Stenting

My spade plunges through tough grass
loam, clay, the dolorous remains of days
enlarging each inspection hole
until it resembles a small, neat grave.
I would like to reassemble these shards.
Then the ding of steel on curved terracotta.
I am an archaeologist, or surveyor
an explorer re-charting neglected territory.
Our nineteen year-old was a baby
when I last plumbed these blocked waters.
The eldest of four, he reads at college now.
Nesting thrushes leave the lemon-scented gum
to serenade me from our jacaranda
consolation for this foetid swamp odour
the detritus of our days glugging free.
Roots searching for a drink in drought
formed a web, trapping fat, soapy waste
beneath us, a gurgling, trouble backing up
as relapsed hours snarled into weeks, years
foul, unobserved, accreting
congealing into a dam when we took off
for our longest holiday since nappy days
a break sorely needed, my voice shut
my only dreams left, mad dreams at night.
Then Seamus Heaney shared his thoughts
Philip Levine, too, lighting my candle.
Slick ooze flushes slate-black to clear
our water now flowing, silent, unimpeded.
Sated by earthy success, I feel refreshed
a man with a muddy spade, a clean outlook.

Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in The Best Australian Poetry, Descant, Island, Magma, The Malahat Review, Southerly,& Westerly. His latest book is Lost Language of the Heart, Ginninderra (Adelaide). He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia.

Peter Marra - Three Poems

2011-06-08T12:32:00.003-05:00

Death Valley Confidential

sexy sadie and leslie mourned:
another mansion of old Hollywood
was torn down the previous evening

the dune buggy attack battalion
left them on the street:
a peyote wrestle
two women
drugged
burnt
lonely

they dreamt
that they laughed
that they told each other secrets
that they would lay in wait for
fever smiles of
death valley

unable to
cry in private
unable to
share grief
a static
electric
pain

embarrassed and silent
they longed for a
television –
a peek -
to watch themselves
on the evening news
(mom and dad are blind)

dreams of carving avenging
words in blood
as they pirouetted at night
on the silver screen

70 x 7 times the
fingernails scratched the air
a cyclone destroyed
the roller coaster of the madchens

70 x 7 not forgiven
“true desert,” she said as the
dune buggy attack battalion drove up
and slammed through America’s heartland

watching crucified cartoons for
Saturday morning
finishing dreams
they knocked down the doors
watched tv and left
the red pools dried and
no one knew

blank air
black sound
they marveled
at her dreams

hurdy-gurdy reversal
a Theremin aflame
the women lay down
in the sand and
kissed the gasoline
from each other’s eyes

eyes connected
out of gas
balmy air far
from time’s reach

sexy sadie and leslie
held each other :
they were afraid of sleep
so they stared blankly.

at home the
chronically ill priests
ate the remains of the
congregation
so bloody and bare
and watched the churches burn

Heliotropes

A collision with a conscience
While walking slowly through the halls
Into the dusty theatre.

The stage is old
And the patrons dozing;
An audience ignored

Dust clouds rising.
He watched.
He waited for her to arrive.

The clock’s arms spun backwards
As the ceiling melted a reddish black.
He was waiting to see her convulsive torso.

He imagined the line of sweat that would be above her lip
The click clack noises annoyed him
Reminding him of where he was.

In slashed burnt scenery
She appears as
A long afternoon shadow.

This is when the fear level is highest:
Her nightgown clings to her wet frame
Outlining shadows and reminding him

Of the newly green trees passing by the widows
In their opiated splendor
Hiding from him.

He moved towards her.
She was silently glaring.
By touching her he knew it was

A wrong kiss.
An incorrect movement.
Creatures both male and female rolled in the surf.

He sold pain as burlesque.
She bought pain as a birthright.
Decayed delinquent memories always flash wildly.

Dogs

i refused the maidens that i saw
nailed to the crosses

while the fission dog
glared at their faces

resenting every tug of the leash
i try to push through and out

the lamps behind the windows explode
as we wander in the moist alleys

we smell the hot breath as we ascend the stairs
our faces healed by the warm breeze

they show disapproval and
admire the activity below

i hear the tap-tapping of
the boots on cement

the leash has dropped

she’s after me now waiting at the end
of the grinning hallway

gently the snow becomes a bed
as we lie down for a sleep

narcotic. wired. plug us in.
take us now.

frozen chalk-lines
hardly stirring slightly moving

Peter Marra is in Williamsburg Brooklyn. His goal is to become an adjective and find new methods of description. He has either been published in or has work forthcoming in Caper Literary Journal, amphibi.us, Yes Poetry, Maintenant 4 & 5, Beatnik, Crash, Danse Macabre, Clutching At Straws O Sweet Flowery Roses, Breadcrumb Scabs,Carcinogenic and Calliope Nerve. He is currently constructing his first collection of poems.

Ilire Zajmi - One Poem

2011-06-05T01:57:00.005-05:00

To Prishtina

In misty dawns
You resemble the lass
Waiting all night for her lover to come
Shootings defy the peace
At the gray daybreak at nightfall
While lovers sneaking
Quench their lust on magic beds
Prishtina
I hear your breath on your bosom
Pounding of evening footsteps
When a black robe is laid over shoulders
I feel your childbearing pain
In the veins of my blood
Laying wounded and dragging
At the Press Palace Ulpiana Sunny
Hill Dardania
And I fear Prishtina
For the dawns evenings lusts pain
And I fear Prishtina
For F r e e d o m.

Ilire Zajmi was born on October 16, 1971 in Prizren, south of Kosovo. Ilire writes poems, prose and is author of two poetry collections, one novel and a publicistic book. She works as a television journalist and also a professor in the field of media communication.

Gary Beck - Two Poems

2011-06-01T14:18:00.002-05:00

In My Lifetime III

I have seen America change
from an industrial power
to a military power
that occupied much of the globe,
inflicting on the weaker world
culture, values, ideas,
transported by democracy.
Somehow our rulers neglected
the foundations of our nation
and all our creating, building,
the production of a people
was allowed to rust away,
while the world progressed
leaving us far behind,
declining in engineering,
diminishing in invention,
our bright hope for the future
fading, leaving us bitter,
our only consolation
dominance in the arts.

Condition Normal

When I was young
my country won a great war,
then brought our troops home
in millions, leaving thousands
occupying conquered lands.
Soon frictional rivals
threatened another great war.

As I grow old
I measure out my life
in different wars,
each more erosive
of the human spirit
in never ending conflicts,
filling me with dread
that I will meet my end
with the sound of the guns.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn't earn a living in the theater. He has several chapbooks including: 'Remembrance' (Origami Condom Press), 'The Conquest of Somalia'(Cervena Barva Press), 'The Dance of Hate' (Calliope Nerve Media), and 'Expectations' (Rogue Scholars Press). His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway and toured colleges and outdoor performance venues. His fiction and poetry has appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.

William Robison - Two Poems

2011-05-27T12:26:00.001-05:00

Dog Days

In the dog days the boy lay alone
while the attic fan rumbled, sucking
in the sounds of the leaden nighttime

the lonely bark of a midnight dog
firecracker blast, far away laughter
the distant wail of a Negro choir

chilling his uncomprehending heart
even as damp heat draped a blanket
over clinging flannel sheets, steaming

as did the dry cleaner’s laundry press
whose sudden blast of pressured exhaust
spurred shoeless flight, blind panic like the

lightning that scorched the y-shaped pecan
concussive pulp wood truck tire blowout
sudden pistol shot, sharp reprimand

once at the old church camp he laughed and
splashed in the green hued pool till supper
where he ate with accustomed gusto

while a funny old man played a steel
guitar, and when he’d finished, he could
not bear to part with his empty plate

walked with the other boys to the trash
slipped past the door, stashed it in the car
thence to the box springs beneath the bed

later it was gone, but no one said
a word to him, perhaps they thought it
just a childish prank or feared what it

revealed of nascent homegrown voodoo
congealed in rancid platter fibers
concealed in dry bones, meatless, well-gnawed

Gone Pecan Done Blown a Gasket

After A. E. Houseman, ‘The Chestnut Casts His Flambeaux’
and after the hurricanes and the oil spill

Gone pecan done blown a gasket, and the sparks
fly from burning leaves in the smoke—sucker
pop like a firecracker, can’t see for cinders.
Gimme ‘nother one of them Schlitz, podnuh.

This have been one crappy freakin’ season.
Wait ‘til next year, my happy ass—if
it ain’t another damn hurricane, some
dipshit gon’ set the oilrig on fire.

Bust my daddy and granddaddy, too—
drunk up in the shed when here come Audrey,
Betsy, Katrina—everything blown
to hell and back to town. Well, fuck it, then!

Let me tell you, bud, it’s a goddamn sin
to bust our butt all day for fish bait and
government cheese when we could be dancin’
with them pretty little girls ‘fore we croak.

So hand me an Old Milwaukee, tall boy,
‘cause we just be a couple of assholes
like all the rest—go wish in one hand and shit
in the other and see which fills up first.

Some days the alligator eat you, chief,
some days that son-of-a-bitch eat Jenkins,
but it ain’t no skin off your fat rear end
if it’s the Jenks he got in his choppers.

Life is a bitch and then you die, brother.
Trouble see me comin’ and lick his jaws.
All we can do is keep on keepin’ on,
so reach me one of them Bud Lites, will you?

William Robison teaches history at Southeastern Louisiana University; writes about early modern England, including the forthcoming The Tudors in Film and Television (with Anna Sue Parrill); is a musician and filmmaker (see http://www.myspace.com/562067730); and has poems accepted by Anemone Sidecar, Asinine Poetry, decomP magazinE, On Spec, and Paddlefish.

Carly Bryson - One Poem

2011-05-25T12:01:00.003-05:00

The Sky is Blue Too

Should we just get it over with?
If it's not God fucking with us, it's the would be Gods.
Sons of bitches!
How much despair is enough? A thimble or a tankard? A ships hull or a continent?

There never was an ark. Someone saw the animals leave before the storm--
[they do sense those things which doesn't say much for the dinosaurs].
It became a parable and the parable became the word of God, and God didn't we buy into that one?

How should we go? Crushed by a crumbling building, fried by fire, washed out to sea--
where a kid will find our bloated carcasses washed up on the beach,
poke our bellies with a stick then run away laughing?
Probably something he learned from Jackass: The Movie-- part ten.
Little sons of bitches.

If the infrastructure, or the wildfires, or the hurricanes or the floods don't get us
then the bankers or the politicians or the warlords or the [kiss my ass the economy sucks and so do you] employers surely will.

My slice of pie sits in the window cooling.
Beautiful, fresh blueberry pie.

The wind blows it off the sill, a vagrant comes by and sticks his dirty thumb in it,
the little kid from next door swipes it.
He sits behind a hedgerow filling his future diabetic belly, shoveling it into his fat little mouth
as his rotting can't afford a dentist no more teeth turn blue.

I look at the sky.
Yeah--it's blue too.

Carly Bryson lives in Houston, Tx and writes poetry and prose dealing with social and political topics and the dynamics of being human. She has work published in Carcinogenic Poetry, Nothing.No.One.Nowhere, Calliope Nerve, The Shine Journal, ETC: A Journal of General Semantics and Poets Against War.

Joshua Baumgarten - Four Poems

2011-05-23T00:58:00.001-05:00

Watch the Cinema Wash Away

The scenes we watched
were not from the director of
Independence Day or 2012.
Will Smith did not save the day.
the oh's and ah's and hands over gasping mouths,
collectively we streamed the devastation
there was no need to download a film that day.

First came the awe
then the realization
that Mother Nature's power
is in the end
that much more beautiful and relentless
than any hyped up human imagination.

There are no clear cut
Hollywood plot lines
running along
the serrated edges
of this real life
fault line.

Asylum Seekers are not Fireproof

Through slanted eyes and swirling minds
They watched the man ignite himself like
An oil field on fire in the center of the Dam,
On a sunny Wednesday afternoon in early spring, a buzz
Kill for all to see, especially for those who had just
eaten a flame grilled kebab or
had dropped another hit of cut
Ecstasy.

The Garden

Another day slip away
Candle forgive me for burning
You from both ends
Like poison flowers caressing
Innocent skin excuses purged
Silence screaming strangled within.

Windows covered with dog snot
Paw prints and bird shit
Nothing to see in the garden anyway
Its been a long winter weary
Still some time to wait before
A blooming has the balls
To breaks free.

The sun falters
behind fat assed clouds
The spring half baked in stoned slanted eyes
The morning cracks under thin layers of lingering ice
The birds we hear chirping sing
Confused songs before swooping
For the leftovers rotting within.

Fuck Lego

lego disasters

The crumbling pieces of x-wing fighters and
Castle walls
Caught under bare foot
Between fungus and blistered toes
stick like shards of shattered dreams

Into the dried and callous bulb of my foot
Of my soul,
Of my entire overtired
And weary eyed being.

a breakfast table overcrowded
with drawings of three headed elephants
letters from school
hairpins and tax forms
hard boiled egg shells,
newspapers smudged with instant coffee
and everyday mild hysteria
toasted white bread with poppy seeds waiting
to be smothered by
overly exaggerated yellow imitation butter
my eyes flutter to wake up a little bit more

and I notice my agenda and five record lp’s
somewhat submerged in my sons fish tank.

I sigh and
try to swallow getting angry
But Monday mornings are a bitter pill
The size of an elephant tranqulizer

That I can’t seem to swallow without
A shot of tequila
And well at 8 am on a Monday
Morning while trying to get your kid out the door to school
A shot of tequila is maybe not the best way to swallow my impending explosion
Into subtle rage and sublime insanity.
So I just swallow myself instead and push my being
up from the table,
Head hung low and go
remove my agenda and the records from the fish tank
All the while checking the floor for lego pieces

That if stepped upon
Would surely detonate this fathers head
To implode.

Joshua Baumgarten is an expat New Yorker residing below sea level in the Netherlands. A poet for the page as well as spoken word performer. Baumgarten is the man behind the Irrational Library, an organization dedicated to putting together the most erratic and exotic rock-n-roll evenings on his side of the world. Baumgarten's work can be found in zines from New York to Los Angeles to Amsterdam.

Fahredin Shehu - One Poem

2011-05-19T00:37:00.001-05:00

The Zircon Goblet

Flame was the name of my obsession
Flame, the blue,
Flame of love

Flame became purple of my compassion
Flame the green
Flame of spirit

Flame was sparkling, my impression
Flame of eternity
Flame transparent glow

The goblet became full
The blood turned life

The Calla was my move
The Lilly of heaven

The mist unfurled heavy
The dust turned cloud

The jewel remained beneath is precious
The soul you keep turned LOVE

We. Drink. In. Tribute. I. Die. Surely. But. Slowly.
We. Feel. In. Unison. She. Embraces. Me. Motherly.
Alas. Tonight. I’m. Drunk. Of. Love.
The. Zircon. Goblet. Outpoured. Blood.
The. One. That. Transforms. In. Life. For. Ages.
The. One. Lives. For A. Day. And. Eternity. More.

Born in Rahovec, South East of Kosova, in 1972, Fahredin Shehu, graduated at Prishtina University, Oriental Studies. M.A. in Literature. PhD in Sacral Estethics.Fahredin actively works on Calligraphy discovering new mediums and techniques for this specific form of plastic art.

Joseph M. Gant - One Poem

2011-05-18T00:32:00.000-05:00

Appeasement

we died sexless and without a cry.
— a rattle for the making sure of it —

because everything of lasting worth
was left while waiting, found, a new
and less consumptive way to swallow.

we proclaimed to never fear our death
and lied with lips of tremor.

when it came for us without a kiss
a fuck and a sigh for the time.
over and it wasn’t worth the wait.

Joseph M. Gant is a scientific glassblower by trade and a writer by everything else that matters. His work has appeared modestly in small press and academic journals. Poetry editor for S A M Publishing, Joseph resides outside Philadelphia and his full length collection of poetry, Zero Division, is forthcoming with Rebel Satori Press.

David S. Pointer - Three Poems

2011-05-13T23:30:00.000-05:00

Mistaken Identity

If Barack Obama
were the new Abe
Lincoln he’d end
wage slavery,
unemployment,
underemployment
plus save the Unions,
then ask employers
to give workers the
pay, the whole pay,
and nothing but the
pay instead of using
his powers of oratory
to prop up elitists
engaging in silent
global emaciation
proclamations known
as the business of war

Climbing Towards Descent

The economic air pirates
all in planes the color

of blueberry whiskey cake
flying over the divine right

of bullets and bombs to aid
in the pre-beautification

decimation droppings, and
the ever unfound world

peace beneath each
international pounce

Lighting Devices

If international
economics were
simply an inverted
dome or an 8-arm
chandelier with an
armed maintenance
team and darkness
scattering services
under a silver plated
canopy with beautiful
opaline shades, I’d
go ahead and explain
the way money really
works to the curious
guy at the bar, but he
only knows coal miner
lights, yet he knows
the whole lamp of
the little guy and
we all listen hard

David S. Pointer has poems forthcoming in "Ottawa Arts Journal," "Midwestern Gothic," and "Gutter Eloquence". He currently lives in Murfreesboro, TN.

Felino A. Soriano - Two Poems

2011-05-11T23:20:00.000-05:00

Impartation

The varicose love
revealed by fallen
recollection of unalarmed feather
sways and conveys
anecdotal fallacies
corrupting the original facet of life’s
orchestrated connection:
into avifauna’s aerial manipulation,
age again releases strength of
corporeal temporal understanding
thus, pertaining to death’s lineage of shape
affirmation upon ground-embrace
concrete realization of feather’s housed
configuration, disallows
detriment to the body’s removal
miles from the landing now
enveloped by architectural
shadow.

Sound’s Reverberating Desolation

Horn of caw
calls from swollen bell
-tongue apparition
voiceless dichotomy
dialectical persuasion: voice
of broken leisure. Speech
ambulates, dictates personal
involution, containing etches
of subjective motivation
gregarious by words and delinquent
listening, reaching
into the echo’s protocol of
denial and movement’s
circumvolving departure.

Felino A. Soriano (b. 1974) is a case manager and advocate for adults with developmental and physical disabilities. In 2010, he was chosen for the Gertrude Stein "rose" prize for creativity in poetry from Wilderness House Literary Review. Philosophical studies collocated with his connection to various idioms of jazz explains motivation for poetic occurrences. For information, including his 44 print and electronic collections of poetry, over 2,700 published poems, interviews, and editorships, please visit his website: www.felinoasoriano.info.