Streaming
by Jon Riccio
The revenue a chat room derives from a duodenum
and a stapled pouch,
a stomach’s subculture of gain, cleanse, loss
in the bypass
gifted to me when I turned nineteen.
The buffets it wrested,
the domain I registered,
all those ethers clamored around a meme,
the social word-shit one types
“like my lap band” “tweet my gout”
streaming on alt-dot haunts.
My searchability full-blown, I’m a phoenix
gone gastric with more boyfriends than you
have optic nerves and that’s Ohio alone.
Mother, I’ve macerated my tract,
the live feed of a chafing dish
less invasive than bariatric.
Father, meet Evan from Ashtabula.
He crowd-funded my flab,
one download from betrothed.
Prompt
The writer wearing a mercurochrome corset
gives you a picture of half-eaten pie,
you inure a blood phobia,
the transitive inferred.
She sends the angel
with candy-wrapper wings.
The Rapture is a dinner bill, you
are its Andes mint. You jostle a trinity:
the abortion building
next to the Weight Watchers
near the Flapjack Shack,
rev the Z in Nazareth, smite its arcade.
Separate Recyclables
I am the nightmare of every environmentalist
turned conversion therapist
hoping to biodegrade
the gay away.
Woe to the zealot
who’s chained himself
to my landfill, its damnables
poking out of a cardboard pond,
diorama forsaken because I ran out of tape.
Each morning,
tribunals and a tin glade.
My handrail, on eulogy,
saying, “absence of rings kept me
beautiful, self-realization drained him alone.”
BIO
Jon Riccio studied viola performance at Oberlin College and the Cleveland Institute of Music. A recent Pushcart nominee, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Paper Nautilus, Qwerty,Redivider, CutBank Online, Waxwing and Switchback, among others. An MFA candidate at the University of Arizona, he resides in Tucson.
Sandra Rokoff-Lizut, retired educator and children’s book author (published by Macmillan, Holt Reinhart & Winston, and Hallmark Inc.), is currently both a printmaker and poet. She is a member of Oregon Poetry Association and first place award winner in their Spring 2014 contest, Mary’s Peak Poets, Poetic License, Gertrude’s, and a weekly writing salon. Rokoff-Lizut volunteers by teaching poetry to middle-schoolers at the Boys and Girls Club in Corvallis. She also studied poetry through OSU as well as at Sitka and Centrum. Previous publications include Illya’s Honey, The Bicycle Review, Wilderness House Review, The Penwood Review, Wild Goose Poetry Review and Verseweavers.
Marina Carreira is a Luso-American writer from the Ironbound section of Newark, NJ. She holds a BA in English from Montclair State University and a MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University. Marina is an adjunct professor of English at Essex County College and a correspondent for the Luso-Americano newspaper. She is curator and co-host of “Brick City Speaks”, a monthly reading series at Hell’s Kitchen Lounge in Newark, NJ. Her work is featured or forthcoming in The Acentos Review, Naugatuck River Review, Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora: An Anthology, and Paterson Literary Review.
John Lowther’s work appears in the Atlanta Poets Group’s anthology, The Lattice Inside (UNO Press, 2012) and in Another South: Experimental Writing in the South (U of Alabama, 2003). Held to the Letter, co-authored with Dana Lisa Young is forthcoming from Lavender Ink in 2015. John also works in video, photography, paint, performance and other mediums as the need arises. He’s writing a dissertation to reimagine psychoanalysis had intersex and transgender lives been taken as foundational for understanding subjective possibility. He blogs as Lowtherpoet at WordPress.
Gerard Sarnat is the author of three collections, 2010’s HOMELESS CHRONICLES from Abraham to Burning Man, 2012’s Disputes, and September 2014’s 17s. He is now working on Patriarchs. Harvard and Stanford educated, Gerry’s set up and staffed clinics for the disenfranchised, been a CEO of healthcare organizations and a Stanford professor. For Huffington Post reviews, future reading dates and more, visit Gerard Sarnat.com. His books are available at select bookstores and on Amazon.
Ho Cheung (Peter) Lee, Ed.D., resides in Hong Kong where he teaches and writes. He earned his doctorate from The University of Hong Kong with a thesis on teaching reading. His poetry has appeared in aaduna, FIVE Poetry Magazine, Poetry Pacific, Red Booth Review, The Chaffey Review, The Interpreter’s House and elsewhere. His short stories have also been published in Eastlit, Miracle Magazine, River Poets Journal and The Oddville Press. He is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BALLOONS Lit. Journal (www.balloons-lit-journal.com).
Kevin McCoy’s works have appeared in Forge, Wisconsin Review, Crate, Natural Bridge and several other journals. His collection “Tea in a Bowl” will be published by Unsolicited Press in January 2015.
John McKernan – who grew up in Omaha Nebraska in the middle of the USA – is now a retired comma herder / Phonics Coach after teaching for 41 years at Marshall University. He lives – mostly – in West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press. His most recent book is a selected poems Resurrection of the Dust. He has published poems in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Journal, Antioch Review, Guernica, Field and many other magazines.
Tamer Mostafa’s work has been featured in California Quarterly, The Rag Literary Magazine, Poets Espresso Review, Confrontation Literary Magazine, Stone Highway Review, and No Infinite. He was the recipient of the 2011 CSU Sacramento Bazzanella Literary Award in Creative Non-Fiction and the 2013 Lois Ann Latin Rosenburg Prize for Poetry.
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