Home Poetry

At the beach

by Abigail George

 

Bright lights in the city.
You had been made of iron.
Your memoir is made of whirlpools.
As vital as a tombstone.
I can thrive in this cancer ward.
Filled with the song of mannequins.
In the dark, I turn black.
Sea of trees I cannot fathom you.
Swimming pool once a myth.
Upside down and wishful.
I can see Jonah’s Whale from here.
Stars in the fabric of moonlight.
Everything smells of spirit.

 

 

Hibiscus and insects

 

Now I meet with disaster.
I come with bereavement.
The ways of water run deep.
Salt and light. Before disability struck
Do you remember?
The epic heights you reached.
The cigarettes you smoked
In high school. Boys made out of paper.
Men made out of gin.
You were unsuitable for both.
You stopped drinking milk.
You stopped eating altogether.
Anorexia they called it.
The elephant in the room.
You went to the moon
In addition, back in dreams.
You held the autumn chill
In your hands. Its journal.
There were the walks you took
Around the church. Up to the
Garage where you bought peanuts
And raisins with your father.
The cashier would not smile
As he bagged your purchases.
Your dad’s granadilla hands
He is in the autumn of the years.
It is that festive time of year again.
When you eat, drink, and be merry.
I will not be doing that this year.
I am fragile. A mountainous
Version of tenderness. I melt in the
Presence of children. No good
For anyone. Stay away from me.

 

 

Jericho

 

I am a cat person. I collect strays
Like others collect coins or stamps.
I believe in God, love and crashing
Into things. I spend too much
Time inside my own head.
I am tired of instructing my own work.
I write about the song in the wind.
It becomes my own song.
The song of loneliness. Of Rilke,
Of Nabokov, of Akhmatova,
Of Ernest Hemingway driving
Ambulances during the war.
I write about the seasons
As if I were a poet. The leaves that
Leave fingerprints behind them.
A pint of milk. A jar of honey.
I write about angels and goddesses.
I am impatient and angry
At the human condition and I read
To find myself because this is
This is what the river whispers to me.
Sometimes the road inside too.

 

 

BIO

abigail georgeAbigail George is the author of ‘Africa Where Art Thou’ (2011), ‘Feeding the Beasts’ (2012), ‘All About My Mother’ (2012), ‘Winter in Johannesburg’ (2013), ‘Brother Wolf and Sister Wren’ (2015), and the forthcoming ‘Sleeping Under Kitchen Tables in the Northern Areas’ (2016). Her poetry has been widely published from Nigeria to Finland, and New Delhi, India to Istanbul, Turkey. Her fiction was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She briefly studied film and television production at the Newtown Film and Television School opposite the Market Theater in Johannesburg. She is the recipient of writing grants from the National Arts Council (Johannesburg), the Centre for the Book (Cape Town), and ECPACC (Eastern Cape Provincial Arts and Culture Council) (East London). She writes for Modern Diplomacy, blogs with Goodreads, and contributed to a symposium for a year on Ovi Magazine: Finland’s English Online Magazine.

 

 

 

some afternoon activity

by
adam l.

 

two hours before
sunset in the stale air
the hammock sways more than
me. the sand floats
around me in muted consideration
as i walk into

shade. Kitty follows, tail
brushing my ankle, and i can’t decide
to scratch her
back or return
to the hammock for another
nap.

 

 

some certain persons

 

some certain person
came up to me on the streets
when i was just smoking
the cigarette still between my charred lips
burn-
ing burnt by
faded kisses

some certain person said
do you have money
and i did
just run dry of myself
not much to give
so i listened to her story

and this certain person
was more intimate
with me
than the love i share-
d with some certain someone’s
mouth

 

 

but you are from me

 

i am from the faraway nights of
sleeplessness
the evernear days of your
screams that perch on
my sunken heart
and the vision of your knowing
eyes slashed across my brain

i have held you, your
weight, and added some that you cannot
burden
you give me nothing
less than what i’ve given
(i hope to have given a
lot) dearest,

i am from the womb of a
mother i call mother
but for you i know i am
not

 

 

BIO

adam ladam l. is currently a freshman at Yale-NUS College, Singapore. he is drawn to the limitation of words, and how even in this limitedness, meaning and emotion can be conveyed effectively. he believes that all poetry is confessional, for all poetry came from within us; and the best ones are vulnerable and raw. at times when words seem utterly insufficient, he turns to physical movement in dance and theatre. if interested in interacting or collaborating, he can be reached at theartistadam@gmail.com.

 

 

 

Michael Penny

Out of Office

by Michael Penny

 

I am away from the clouds
and will not be checking the wind
but if it moves me
I will return to the sky.

I am off the planet
ascertaining the space between stars
but if they become too bright
I will put away my measure.

I have left my memory behind
preferring the now and instantly lost
but if you knew me then
I will, to please you, pretend.

I have lost consciousness
and now spend my time in black
but I may know you
so please leave a message.

 

 

Anatomy Lesson

 

My nose breathes in viruses
and my ears accept deceit.

My skin invites irritants in
and reddens at its effrontery.

Muscle pulls away from bone
offended at its ivory rigidity.

My bladder refuses liquids,
even water

and my bowels growl
unhappy with the menu I provide.

My lungs, once puffed up
with their importance, are deflated

and the liver says
what the hell, you need a drink.

My nerves keep everything else
awake all night with their loud jangling

and blood gets into everything
insinuating.

My eyeballs cloud over
as the sky’s become too bright

and my heart simply
flubs it.

Oh brain, why are you
leading this charge?

 

 

Island Time

 

Clocks are irrelevant
to the pieces of time dropped
on islands.

Our arrangements do require
a time to meet
and agreement.

Appointments are only late
if expected to start on time
and no-one expects

even rain to fall as forecast.
It’s no excuse but things
do happen when they do.

Events react to minutes
the way waves do, with momentum
and a crash or a drawing back.

Something happening when it should
removes surprise
which might delight

and the wounding
of expectations missed
can leave bruises.

But go with it, on its time
which will be on time
as islands allow escape

from the selfishness of schedule
while the sea’s surrounding
perimeter fence guards

with its barbed foam of waves.
When time is neither fast nor slow
it warns against attempting departure.

 

 

BIO

Michael PennyMichael Penny was born in Australia, but moved to Canada as a teenager. He now lives on Bowen Island and works as a consultant on regulating professions. He has published five books of poetry, most recently, Outside, Inside from McGill-Queen’s University Press.

 

 

 

Belinda Subraman

Buckling the Bible Belt

by Belinda Subraman

 

I pledge allegiance to my hillbilly past
cheap fan motor buzz
black dirt harshness
inbred bullies and bigotry.
Winter baseboard rumbles heat
in thin walls of fear
walls that work as refuge
enshrine weakness with
corporal punishment in tombs of shame.
Echoes down a backwards hall
require humility and magic prayer
as earth boils and fumes in science.
Reason is a devil’s turd
as we eat the flesh of white Jesus
and drink his blood.
Crackers and grape juice with guilt
and submissive independence
whirlpool around inherited drains
one slang language misunderstood
bucked up with guns
and ambivalent Bibles for all.
Amen.


 

Contrails and Entrails

 

I’m flying over a popcorn sea
finally out of turbulence…
Southern sanctioned abuse.
I’m flying, released
over the veins of earth.

My roots have claws
anger and fear
language of permafrost
tests curved to the negative
surprise pits of darkness
in a house of correction
where nothing is right
nothing is realized
but the changing rules of God
from Bibles living
in tombs of protection.


 

Lunch With Jesus

 

We held hands around the table
at Applebee’s and prayed before eating.
Fox Network was there and low self-esteem.
“The white cops were right, “one said.
“More people need beating.
We need more guns.
Too many getting rich off welfare
too lazy to work.”
“Christians have no rights,” another claimed.
“What about the Christians?”
I kept quiet. Dogs were howling for meat.
Jesus turned his head away.
Bibles slept in their cars.

 

 

BIO

Belinda SubramanBelinda Subraman has been writing poetry since the 6th grade and publishing since college. She had a ten year run editing and publishing Gypsy Literary Magazine. Six of those ten years were from Germany where she was a Bohemian outcast among officer wives. She edited books by Vergin’ Press, among them: Henry Miller and My Big Sur Days by Judson Crews. While in Germany she also published the Sanctuary Tape Series which was a mastered compilation of audio poetry and original music from around the world. If you interview her about her publishing days you will discover that she threw out a whole Charles Bukowski manuscript because he told her to just trash what she didn’t like. THEN she found out he was Famous. She might have kept the manuscript but still would not have published it. (It wasn’t his best work). Bukowski, Burroughs and a few other literary figures did make it into some of the first Gypsy issues, however.

Over the years Ms. Subraman’s work has appeared in print journals, anthologies and online journals including: Best Texas Writing, The Louisiana Review, The Arkansas Review, A New Geography of Poets, Puerto del Sol, Borderlands, Rio Grande Review, Social Justice, Gargoyle, Between the Cracks, Out of Line, Mondo Barbie, Big Bridge, and Lips Unsealed. In the past year her work has appeared in: Poets and Artists, Red Fez, Unlikely Stories, Tribe Magazine, Yellow Chair Review, and Chiron Review.

 

 

 

prophecy

by john sweet

 

 

woke up naked and blind
and wanted to call you
but didn’t

felt the warmth of
someone next to me

the need for executions

for the deaths of innocent
mothers and children

something to pass the time
until my vision returned

 


The Myth of St. Maria

 

You and I, cowards like Picasso, like
fists on doors in the empty hours
of the night, soldiers acting on orders,
boots through sleeping skulls, and when
victory is declared the words all sound like
screams. The men who speak them have
the heads of birds, with smiles all
blood and gore.

You ask for flight, you receive paper
airplanes. You receive the gift of loss, the
secrecy of houses, the killer running across
the back yard but his lover left behind.

Don’t call it a war.

Don’t ask about the children.

They were raised to believe in Jesus,
and then they were abandoned. Were left at
the edges of highways, at the borders of
anonymous states and unnamed countries,
and when strangers approached, they fled
into the wilderness.

When the helicopters came in low,
the forests exploded in flames.

It was the belief that all truth could be
measured by money. It was the hands of
priests turned into grasping claws, and the
paintings were all slashed and the
curtains ripped down, and what was left at
the end of the day was a nation of
broken windows

The knowledge that we were all
descended from whores.

That Christ was only spoiled meat
left out by an indifferent hand.

That everything is sacred.

 

 

the arrogance of light

 

said this is my gift to you and
gave me a book of blank pages, gave me
a coward’s smile
which mirrored my own

it was the war,
the one just before you were born,
and we stumbled through piles of corpses
with stretchers and whiskey

with pistols, because certain questions
can only ever have one answer

because the pages were blank and
we needed blood
and the girl said she was waiting for
                                    her father

said he’d be there soon, but of course he
was dead, and then so was she

we couldn’t take any chances,
you see

we’d been given gifts

beautiful new poisons which were
no good without victims

bombs,
which the scientists warned us were
                                    only theories,
but god they worked so well

and we were given clean white walls,
and so we burned the shadows of women,
of children, of sleeping babies
into them, and we called it a victory

we asked the doctor to keep the
prisoners alive until they’d
answered all of our questions

we improved upon the crucifixion

took turns raping the girl before
we killed her, and she never
made a sound

was just another statistic by the time we
got to her younger sister, and in
the papers we were being called heroes

in the villages, we were having
the men dig their own shallow graves
and it was just a precaution,
you see

we were just protecting the future

we were making sure the
truths would survive

we had this book,
and we were writing them down

 


explanation

 

all of my poems in
the past tense

all of my reasons

any number of excuses

four days of rain & the
truck wouldn’t start and
there was nothing i could say
to make my son stop
crying

there was nothing i could
do but hold him

both of us very quiet
there in the dark

 


slaying the angel

 

mother says it was easy,
was like falling in love, says
they beat the girl together,
then just beat her to death

says they left her in the shed
for two months,
then dumped her in the bay

says it just happened,
like a poem or a war

was just the inevitability of
small bones breaking
beneath the weight of joy

 

 

BIO

john sweetjohn sweet, b. 1968, still numbered among the living. a believer in writing as catharsis. an optimistic pessimist. opposed to all organized religion and political parties. avoids zealots and social media whenever possible. latest collections include THE CENTURY OF DREAMING MONSTERS (2014 Lummox Press) and A NATION OF ASSHOLES W/ GUNS (2015 Scars Publications).

 

 

 

Sean Howard

pond (fall postcard)

by Sean Howard

 

               bir-
ch,          pose
held,       whi-
te           her-

on

 

 

wave (english poem, cape breton)

            for mi’kmaw elder albert marshall

            rum-
our,          sto-
nes          mur-
mur,          un-
der          the
          ton-

gue

 

 

stopstart (drowned poem, highway 125)

traffic –
deer, gra-
zing ozone

 

 

stir

a point of rhyme anyway,
to split the screen –

apple & cinnamon,
break of day, two
million people
in prison

 

 

shadowgraph 66: the singing electrons

(poetry detected in igor y. tamm’s nobel physics lecture, 1958)

 


i

quantum –
koans in the
lab

 

ii

nucleus –
‘the whole small-
er than the parts’

 

iii

atoms –
para-
dice

 

iv

snatch –
pandora’s
box

 

v

electrons –
conducting
the dead?

 

vi

man –
soft
pawn

 

vii

drawing –
light set
in stone

 

viii

second eden –
‘the familiar
hissing’

 

ix

physics –
current
king

 

x

left –
the child’s waves
on the shore

 

 

shadowgraph 115: if we go on compressing

(poetry detected in subramanyan chandrasekhar’s nobel physics lecture, 1983)

 


i

india, pakistan, par-
titioning the stars. (earth
under fire.) dante: ‘time?

love cooling…’ the poetic
scenter of attention. light’s
aphorism. ‘citizens’; school-

ed assemblies. ‘vast interior’:
depression forming in the
gulf… ‘maturity’ – i do

not see, once we’re
compressed, how
we can ever

 

ii

dwarves: what humans mean
by themselves. (for mine is the
pressure & the density, saith

 

the law…) our distant relations
to the equations of state. haiku –
knowledge economy. global

eyes: everyone slowly/becom-
ing white.
apollo’s final mis-
sion; ‘one day, men on

stars!’

 

iii

the man-
dala smash-
ers. (hiroshima:

‘explicit degene-
racy.’) neutral
harmless enou-

gh?

 

iv

built-in incan-
descence. (atom:
wherein the world?)

suicidal vengeance;
dwarves manically com-
pressing the planet…
(

sex – special relativ-
ity.) travelling light
in the realm of

time

 

 

BIO

Sean HowardSean Howard is the author of Local Calls (Cape Breton University Press, 2009) and Incitements (Gaspereau Press, 2011). His poetry has been widely published in Canada and elsewhere, nominated for a Pushcart Prize in the US, and anthologized in The Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books, 2011 & 2014). Sean is adjunct professor of political science at Cape Breton University, researching nuclear disarmament and the political history of 20th Century physics. His ‘Shadowgraphs Project’ has been supported by a creative writing grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.

 

 

 

This Road Has Clearly Been on a Bender

by Marcella Benton

 

a flock of spandex cyclists take the unexpecting road like fighter jets

a blunt contrast to the rickety wheeled meth head
twitching towards them

cars oink by
quaking over that too thin white line
quivering to devour them all

because this road
has clearly
been on a bender

cars can barely hang on
as it jokes and chokes the hillside

with corn stalking the banks
wishing it was a river or the seaside in summer

just at the right time of day
when the sun and the moon shine down together like a cross-eyed girl

 

 

Hibernation

 

hibernation today
stuck in the warm fluffed bed
wreathed by domesticats and dogs snoring

made a sandwich of myself
I will live off the stored fat
until there is nothing but crumbs

the purrrrr of the skin and bone feline
king of the mountain

syncopates with the rumble of cars
patting down the street
rat a tat tapping my windows

unopened books and a revolver on the nightstand

not enough blanket to cover my cold feet

 

 

A Ghost in the Kitchen

 

I thought I heard you in the kitchen
running water dirty feet

saw the tip of a head above the door behind me
reflection of someone riding a bike in the hall mirror

must be the ghost you insisted we had

dog toys rolling uphill
the cat staring down the corner
but where are you now

maybe you just could see the future

so who is haunting who…

running each other over every day
sandwiched like a mack truck

maybe we made it
but no

no death comes early for the poor man
with a wink and a nudge

and vultures don’t give a shit

 

 

Whiffs of Nostalgia

 

we pass yawns back and forth
almost as intimate as french kisses on the porch swing

catching whiffs of nostalgia

of him
needling into that summer dress

and I was such a good girl
sit lay roll over

play dead
it’ll be over soon

 

 

Spring

 

so lily livered
swallowing poppies like candy

staining the grass with her perennial gardens

glads winking at her nose
changing her diaphanous mind
quicker than a soiled diaper

a little too late for the wrist cut roses
trickling warm and salty over her cuticles

telling her to replant before someone else does

 

 

BIO

Marcella Benton lives in Lakeland, FloridaMarcella Benton, with her husband and pets. She and her husband own and operate a screen printing and embroidery company, Whatever Tees.

empty streets

Domenic James Scopa

Empty Streets…

by Bakhyt Kenzheev

 

Empty streets, deep gaps beneath the doors.
The autumn world is cool and fleshless.

The forty-year old poplar above my head
still rustles with its tinfoil foliage.

Its owner, by next summer, is bound
to saw it down—so it doesn’t block the sun,

so it doesn’t rustle, doesn’t sing above me,
doesn’t wreck the pavement with its roots,

and you can’t breathe deep enough—but want to—
of even the September bitterness, the final feeble sun…

 

 

Willow

by Anna Akhmatova

 

I was raised in checkered silence,
in the chilly nursery of the young century.
The voice of man was harsh−
it was the wind whose words were dearest to me.
I cherished burdocks and nettles−
most of all the silver willow.
And, gratefully, it lived
with me all my life, its weeping branches
fanning my insomnia with dreams.
−Strangely−I outlived it.
Out there a stump stands, and other willows
speak with foreign voices
beneath our skies.
And I am silent…as though a brother has died.

 

 

Someone Is Beating a Woman

by Andrei Voznesensky

 

Someone is beating a woman
in a car so hot and dark
only the whites of her eyes shine.
Her feet batter the roof
like berserk searchlight beams.

Someone is beating a woman.
The way that slaves are beaten.
Beautifully whimpering,
she yanks open the door and drops
                                    onto the road.

Brakes squeal.
Someone races towards her,
flogs her, drags her
face down in the stinging nettles…

Scumbag, how deliberately he beats her,
Stilyaga, bastard, tough guy,
his dashing shoes, as slender as a flatiron,
stabbing into her ribs.

Such are the pleasures of rebel soldiers,
the delights of peasants…
Somewhere, stamping under moonlit grasses,
someone is beating a woman.

Someone is beating a woman.
Century on century, no end in sight.
It’s the young that suffer this. Somberly
our wedding bells stir up alarm.
Someone is beating a woman.

And what is with the blazing welts?
Last-minute slaps?
That’s life, you say—how so?—
someone is beatin a woman.

But her light is steadfast,
death-defying and divine.
Religions—no,
                        revelations—no.
There are
                        women.

She lays there placid like a lake,
her eyes tear-swollen,
yet still, she doesn’t belong to him
any more than the stars to the sky.

And the stars? They’re pounding
like raindrops on black glass.
Slipping down
they cool
her grief-fevered forehead.

 

 

The Cemetery

by Miguel Hernandez

 

The cemetery lies close
where you and I are sleeping
among blue prickly pears,
blue ancient-plants and children
screaming full of life
if a dead body darkens the road.

From here to the cemetery everything
is blue   golden   crystal clear.
Four steps   and the dead.
Four steps   and the living.

Crystal clear   blue   and golden,
my son, out there, seems far away.

 

 

BIO

Domenic James Scopa is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and 2014 recipient of the Robert K. Johnson Poetry Prize and Garvin Tate Merit Scholarship. His work was selected in a contest hosted by Missouri State University Press to be included in their anthology Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors, volume 3. He is a student of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Program, where he studies poetry and translation. He is also a staff writer for the literary journal Verse-Virtual, a book reviewer for Misfit Magazine, and a professor of literature at Changing Lives Through Literature. His poetry and translations have been featured in Reunion: the Dallas Review, here/there: poetry, Touchstone Magazine, The Bayou Review, Three and a Half Point 9, The Mas Tequila Review, Coe Review, Cardinal Sins, Boston Thought, Howl, Misfit Magazine, Poetry Pacific, Untitled with Passengers, Gravel, Crack the Spine, Stone Highway Review, Apeiron Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Literature Today, Tell Us a Story, Verse-Virtual, Malpais Review, Les Amuses-Bouches, Shout Out UK, Fuck Art, Let’s Dance, Sediments, Birds We Piled Loosely, and Empty Sink Publishing.

 

 

 

Elizabeth Perdomo

Scenes from the Window

by Elizabeth Perdomo

 

Sweet potato vines
Tangle out past the edge
Of gardens

Tobacco barns
Tall & faded grey,
Now empty

White churches, a primitive
Baptist paradise, with outdoor
Tables for picnics on the grounds.

Weathered brick chimneys
Stand solitary in stark vigil decades
After the house fire.

Bent woman wearing bonnet,
Hoeing a long row of fine looking
Collard greens.

Last year’s leftover bales
Of faded hay dot pasture fields
Strewn like pieces from a large game.

Faded box cars abandoned
On rusty rail tracks, faded farmer’s coops
Surrounded by the sparse sea

Of a gravel parking lot spotted by
Tobacco spittle & equally faded
Pickup trucks.

Skeletons of old cotton bales
Stand lost at the red dirt margins
Of a now empty field.

 

May 1979 – Greyhound Bus, South Georgia

 

 

A Woman

 

A sunny day,
A warm pause before
The onset of hard winter.

She enters alone

Afraid, bending in pain
From time abused; human, frail,
Old, forlorn.

Her cold hands
Shake like windows on
Subway trains just passing.

Too many robbers
Stalk her, take her mind,
Her meager security rent checks,

Rob her of what
Life even she no longer
Possesses.

Thieves lurk as death
Behind doors, on side streets
She must pass, unwilling.

Beauty which once flashed in a young smile,
Now gone like dignity; she sits empty,
Wrinkled as a barren womb.

An aged woman, waiting,
Known well by any who dare look
Into her time-worn face

& see the empty road
Of many futures.

 

July 1978 – Boston, Massachusetts


 

A Kidding

 

White
plum blossoms
fly upon fragrant afternoon;
spring breezes swaddle a wet kid,
fresh dropped, first soft bleating breath;
innocence, his mother licks,
urges him to discover
yet untried
feet.

 

8 March 2000 – Rockdale County, Georgia
After Ruby’s 1st Kidding

 

 

BIO

Elizabeth PerdomoElizabeth Perdomo has lived and written in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas these past fourteen years, moving to the region from the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. Born in Kansas, and raised both there and in Colorado, she has written poetry works since a young teen. Perdomo also lived in the Southeastern USA for a number of years. Her written pieces reflect on local place and culture, cooking, gardening, ecology and nature, traditions, spirituality and much more.

 

 

 

Images for Inga

by Kjell Nykvist

after Richard Aldington

 

I.

Ice encased the rosebushes—
The frozen flowers’ colors
Like fluorescent fish
In cloudy water.

 

II.

The elk at the water’s edge,
Massive and horned and red,
Look back at the towering limestone
Adorned with lodgepole pines.
The highest of the green needles,
We think, seem to scratch
The azure sky. To this mountain
Of green and grey, the elk are like
Red sparks from a distant fire.
And we are even smaller—like
White specks floating in a cave
Filled with water.

 

III.

Seeing you there—blue on blue—
Your feet in the warm Adriatic
Is the licking of a pleasure-tongue
Inside my sleepy head.

 

IV.

The merry completion of anticipation is
An empire of catkins sending
Dreaming gleaming grains
Across tender fields.

 

V.

Fears from the past, at last, vanish
Like a swirl of angry blackbirds:
All that remains of self-loathing
Can fit inside a pyx.

 

VI.

The thinking of strange thoughts, and with a loss of words:
Faint shapes in a faded tapestry, on fire.

 

VII.

The darkness deflected merely by candlelight.
The scent of satiety. On a table,
The cool wetness of empty shellfish,
Bread crumbs, the remains of asparagus,
Two punch bowls of chardonnay.
In the background, a melodic web
Of Otis Redding. Close your eyes,
My dear, and you become Otis, singing.

 

VIII.

To a child of winter, the cattails of heat.
To a child of summer, a barrage of ice.
To a child of fall, a pint of pollen.
To a child of spring, a cup of colored leaves.

 

IX.

The rain falls round the patio
In clear lines ending in clear starbursts.
Here is a crystal architecture
Where what is built was never fully designed,
Where what is designed can never be built.


 

Melting Into Portraiture

 

The sun perches
On creamy clouds. The day
Through the oaks makes
An adagio. There’s the
Happiness of honeysuckle.
There’s mint. Birds skip about
And thoughts coalesce.

The mind drifts
On the eyes’ sea until
There’s a soft rupture:

Light yellow bleeds through
Fluffy white, pale blue
Descends on green leaves,
Everything moves more,
Moves more in a sudden breeze.

In my eyes and
Through the breeze

A woman stirs
On a green knoll, her flesh
Fusing with a shower
Of shadows sprayed onto
The ground by the oaks.
Her hair dances round her.
I can see

The amber of her eyes
When she stares back.

It’s a subtle refinement of nature,
The ability to shift, to sway,
To change eternally, to tower above
The mind and eyes, only to shrink
Into grains of thought.

And this new woman,
In the wind and sun-play,
Like the land itself,
Shifts and sways too.
As do I.

We each adopt the attributes
Cast upon us by the other. We each
Consent to the other’s vision.
If joined as one
We’d be a kaleidoscope revealing
A thousand moving shapes
Through a single lens.


 

What is Poetry?

after John Ashbery

 

A Melanesian girl, in Sami clothing,
On the road to Dushanbe? The glissandi

Of birdsongs, how they’re draped in carmine?
Lake Louise? Or this striving

Towards something? Something
Arcane? Though we plead

To know it and clarity too? Will no one
Envisage the different visions

We have envisaged? Perhaps
They will. But it’s all been shattered

Like a fish bowl striking wooden floors,
The wooden shelving having collapsed.

So what? Will an empire of palm leaves
Still fill the vision of she who sees?

 

 

BIO

NykvistKjell Nykvist was born in Kalmar, Småland, Sweden, but grew up in Butte, Montana. He earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in Museum Studies from Baylor University. Kjell is currently a museum curator in Houston, Texas. He recently married his long-time love, Inga Stefánsdóttir, who is a harpsichordist. Kjell’s work has appeared in such publications as Poetry Super Highway, La Noria Literary Journal, The Deronda Review, and Asinine Poetry, as well as in several American and Canadian anthologies. (Kjell Nykvist is a heteronym of Bryan Damien Nichols, who writes his poetry through Kjell, and another heteronym, Alexander Shacklebury. Kjell and Alexander’s debut collection of poems, Whispers From Within, will be published later this year by Sarah Book Publishing, a small, independent Texas press.)

 

 

 

 

 

to the Utter East

by Josey Parker

 

If the ocean was
full of flowers,
how long would it
take for them to wilt?
How long before petals became chips?
Natural with sea salt.

And would they look
like bouquets
or accordions?

When you bite a clover flower
and press it between
your molars,
somehow that blossom
unfolds on the buds
of your tongue.

-no, the flowers
aren’t bouquets or
accordions but carousels like
sticky fingers, maybe?

But the ocean is full of them and so
is your mouth-
your lips spit pollen;
there is no ark to
save us.

Your head is a buoy,
bobbing in
stems, sepals, petals, seeds.
Close your mouth
before
your tongue
catches mine.
I told you I’m allergic to pollen.

 

 

Greensleeves

 

hand me that leaf
we rescued last fall
to press between the p’s

it paled anyways
with veins
like a dry wrist

all we have are the photographs
of our fingers
dusty with chlorophyll

 

 

what will we do with the princes?

 

It’s hurricane season
-so sue me for
boarding up my windows

you didn’t tell me you would
be here throwing
pebbles

 

 

BIO

Josey ParkerJosey Parker is a frazzled student and coffee enthusiast who somehow finds time to write copious amounts of poetry and flash fiction. Her work has previously appeared in the Claremont Review. Although she is an author, she is not in fact, dead.

 

 

 

nuta gangan

still missing

by Nuta Istrate Gangan

 

some day
you will forget me
while I will always remain
a vague uneasiness
some day
you will turn me
into a memory
but you will be startled
by the thought I still exist
I know
you will sense me
the rest of your life
like a soldier
returning from the front
who feels his lost arm
present always
alive pulsing
but still missing

 

love

the world was ending
and still we owed each other
the unconsummated kisses
of all lovers
it rained bitterly
desperately feverishly
it rained with the need of droughts
the despair of floods
your body unleashed
merciless thunder
lightning ripped mine
into quivering arches
you finally slept
by the hot thighs of my thought
at the edge of a long kiss
desperate as the end of the world
with bloody lips
I rose
wrapped you in a dream
and with a single gesture
stopped the rain

 

the eyes

close first but die last
your teeth
stuck into the flesh of my thigh
seek reasons beyond the skin
with a wave of your hand
you balance the world
nestled in a tight fist
the moment of pain
transforming purifying
unspoken words
burn in my blood
those spoken
err beneath your mouth
eyes leave streaks of light
my skin grows translucent
illuminated from the inside
you kindle fires in my heart
kiss butterflies on my ankles
carve me in your image
the empty space inside
begs to be filled
fractures seek to be joined
my sunrises
cannot exist without your sunsets, darling
(paint petals on my eyelashes
do not let my eyes die)

 

white

the hunter never kills for meat
he craves the smell of blood
the agony
the last look in the doe’s eyes
that painful
white look
pierces his retina
and haunts him
stirring his blood
pulsing like an orgasm in his veins
the bloodstain
spreads crimson in the snow
my hands are so cold and white…
I dare not breathe
for fear of waking humanity
from this grinding frost
my sleepy eyelids twitch
my lips can taste my own blood
your white words
scratched on an equally white paper
hurt my eyes
I do not see
I can no longer see
there is only an ocean of white
giving rise to thousands of eyes
snow falls again
over my world
sanguine and absurd
oh Lord…
I do not want
the smell of fresh blood any more
(and you
don’t talk…
don’t talk of love
when my heart is closing
like a doe’s eye dying)

 

eve

you used to say
blue butterflies hide behind my knee
and one day
jasmine will blossom on my ankle
your blood
used to swirl in my veins
hot and silky
you’d take my soul in your fist
drinking me thirstily
to the last drop
you made love primitively
I was your first and last woman
you would bite my hip till it hurt
while kneading children in my womb
you used me
so you could breathe
you would tear pieces from my body
pleading with me to give birth
by a fire
in the middle of a field
biblical
raw
wild
thrusting my teeth into your shoulder
until the unleashed scream
would free the rain from the sky’s manacles
and disturb angels’ wings
in heavens full of primeval sins
I was young
I was Eve
I used to walk carefully
not to disturb
the fragile sleep of butterflies
or start a flowering
and catch your children in my womb

 

 

BIO

nuta ganganNuța Istrate Gangan is a Romanian-American author living in Davie, Florida with her son, Christian, and her husband, Dorin. Her poems are published both in Romanian and English, and her books are available online. Gangan’s poetry is translated into English by Adrian George Sahlean.

 

 

 

Tableau

by Karen Corinne Herceg

 

The world
scaled for living
presses against a zero-degree sky,
the day’s beginning light
opening like a book.
The morning so frozen
will not allow the gibbous moon
to retire,
hovering over still-waiting lamplights,
poor imitations,
all their nightly duty done.
And I: supine across the linens
before this scene
as in a Rousseau tableau,
lying like a cut-out
in my own jungle,
each part outlined clearly
like the white snow-capped roofs
against the icy blue horizon.
And still
I think that you will edge me off the canvas
and paste me to the section
where you live.

 

Hudson History

                            honoring Pete Seeger

We’ve assumed you
beyond your natural shifts and turns,
morphing historical perspective,
birthing ourselves into your river grace,
iron and metal bridged
across your girth,
wave against will.
Adaptable in a marketable world,
your iconic flow
no exception,
your pristine nature filled
with natives and intruders,
the lush natural and
the burden of the built,
from ambitious towers
to towering trees
to the tread of silence
near old wilderness.
You begin at the north,
the top,
and push your power south,
carrying all,
delivering in a democracy of spirit,
challenged, fierce then passive,
history glinting off your journeys,
truth remaining in your depths,
powering through the harbor,
your own story
obscured by ours.

 

A Wake of Frogs

An early April day, arms full of grocery bags,
frost in the air not yet done,
I walked toward the house, stopped,
shocked by the sudden sight,
their gleaming bodies
laid out across rocks rimming the fountain
like civil war soldiers
waiting to be recognized and buried.
The porch where I sat evenings
watching the small waterfall
leech through rocks,
frothing into a pool rimmed with tiger lilies,
was far from soothing now.
How to know the autumn before
that ice would seal a wet tomb
before those innocents could escape?
A city girl, I couldn’t warn them
of nature’s ways.

Bags fallen at my feet, I spotted him
through our picture window,
sitting casually, New York Times in hand.
How he loved the crossword puzzle,
its setup of boxes, the clean, neat lines,
the completion of tiny words,
the supposition of victory.
This was complete, too:
death at the end of long years,
memories frozen over with no future,
laid out to view.
He thought those frogs were a warning
but they were only seeking a proper burial,
an affirmation
of what was long deceased.

 

Betrayer

The truth is
this is a fearful place,
constant trembling
flanked with platitudes,
with magical thinking,
failure drowning in cocktails,
lust laughing in a sophomoric comedy
and smoke curling
the clouded forbidden air.
There’s a lot of leftover
hippie love
and broken philosophies.
We assent to camouflage,
a whimsical toast,
a sea of well wishing,
the rejuvenation of a spa weekend.
Before the dusk of empty bottles,
pill prompted memories,
a closing door,
we consider praying again,
measures of redemption
kicking us back onto the cross,
always just shy of resurrection.

 

 

BIO

karen hercegKaren Corinne Herceg graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University with a B.A. in Literature/Writing. In 2011, she received graduate credits in an advanced writing curriculum with emphasis on editing and revision. She has published in independent, small press publications and has published a book of poetry, Inner Sanctions. As a recipient of New York State grants, Karen has read at various venues, universities and libraries on programs featuring such renowned writers as Pulitzer Prize winner John Ashbery and has studied and read with such well-known poets as David Ignatow and Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Schultz. Publications include Literary Mama, The Furious Gazelle, Immortal Verses, From A Window: Harmony and Inkwell. Her short story, “Knitting In Transit”, was published in Chrysalis Magazine, and she has completed her first full-length novel, Diva! Her current writing projects include a new volume of poems and co-authoring a memoir with award winning music producer Glenn Goodwin. Karen is a featured poet on the Hudson Valley poetry scene. She resides in Orange County, New York.

Visit Karen on Facebook and at her Website: karencorinneherceg.com.

 

 

 

alan reese

So Alive

by Alan Reese

 

how do we bend the mind
to fit the sound of what is?

what is the tone and notes
of the chords of our dreams?

who asks the questions we
struggle to answer?

when do mind and memory
marry and live happily ever after?

where are we and what are we doing
when they come for us?

why do we vibrate like bees in a glass jar
when we are so alive with love?

 

 

TEOTWAWKI

Fish will walk on land, and frogs drop from the sky,
zeppelins will explode and rain fire,
newscasters will turn a blind eye to joy,
and meteorologists will forecast non-existent weather patterns.
My sweater is too tight, and my pyjamas don’t fit.
When Archduke Ferdinand starts out in his armored vehicle,
the world, at prayer and unsuspecting, will be caught off guard
and wobble off kilter the rest of its days.
Signals from space will be misinterpreted
as cosmic static and interstellar background noise.
My nose will be elected president
and declare a state of apathetic disenchantment.
Black ants and red ants will form an alliance
that will elevate water cooler small talk to metaphysical
speculation and force governing bodies to take stock
of entomological trends as socio-economic indicators.
Masturbation will become a national sport.
Hand towel stock will skyrocket.
Personal declaration will be denounced as capitalist claptrap.
My undershirts will go in hiding with the Witness Protection Program.
Pensive moments will be outlawed outright.
Last one to leave will be expected to turn out the lights.

 

 

BIO

alan reeseAlan C. Reese owns and operates an independent subsidy publishing business, Abecedarian Books, Inc. He is the author of the chapbook Reports from Shadowland. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Smartish Pace, Gargoyle, The Baltimore Sun, Maryland Poetry Review, Potomac Review, Delaware Review, Welter, Grub Street, Attic, Bicycle Review, Danse Macabre, and the Loch Raven Review. He teaches writing at Towson University.

 

 

 

bruce mcrae

Perception Management

by Bruce McRae

 

How it is and how it isn’t…

We look for you as if a lost key,
retracing our steps, constructing models,
comparing the right eye to the left.
We employ statistics, the blunt instruments
of guesswork and guesstimates,
and see little harm in chicanery.
Lies can be good for you.

We’re building a better monster,
history airbrushed, the rain holding off,
sin considered an accomplishment.

Now we’re tapping the collective consciousness,
a ready source of gods and archetypes.
We’re instructing you in the art of complacency,
the law on the side of the lawyers.

A hush falls over the Earth
as we prepare our presentation,
including suitable lighting and soothing ambiance.
Even the dead are invited to dine.
Even the living.

 

Identity Crisis

You were the Wife of Bath
and I was Claudius Ptolemy.
I was your sixth or seventh husband
and you were my invisible lover, Mrs. Succubus.
We played games in the sack by candlelight.
We crossed deserts.
Some days we didn’t even know each other.

Little wonder I was so confused.
How does one label their experiences
when rampaging Visigoth’s are at the gate?
With biblical floodwaters rising?
In these damnable firestorms?

One minute we’re Bedouins in a Saharan caravan
and the next we’re planting tomatoes back in Omaha.
“Now you see me, now you don’t,”
you cried out from behind a burning mulberry bush.

And I couldn’t have said it any better.

 

Step Forward

They wanted a volunteer.
I brought them a head on a silver salver.
I pulled your name out of a hat.
I gave them my neighbour’s phone number.

They required donations;
all for a good cause, we were assured.
So I took the loose change out of your pocket,
the gold fillings out of your mouth,
the two pennies reserved for your eyelids.

The gods demand a sacrifice, they insisted.
Of course, we nodded in unison,
jostling for the honour of being first,
taking turns jumping into the bonfire.

Unrestrained in our passion.

 

 

BIO

bruce mcraePushcart nominee Bruce McRae is a Canadian musician with over 900 poems published internationally, including Poetry.com, Rattle and The North American Review. His first book, The So-Called Sonnets is available via Silenced Press and Amazon. To see and hear more poems go to ‘BruceMcRaePoetry’ on YouTube.

 

 

 

L Vargas

Laughing Until It Becomes A Cough

by Lauren Vargas

 

The thin-lashed girl gets it,
a single spinal chill at every roadkill.
It’s not real, she repeats, picturing
a purple pig balloon that’d careened
through the sky, tangling about its
one dimensional, curly-tailed string
and fell at such high speeds that it hit
a telephone pole line, exploding ham
on either sidewalk. Waiting

and watching for a good laugh,
the kids give her a home and lodge
their popcorn kernels behind her tonsils.
She shoves a finger through her ear
to scratch the roof of her mouth, to
speak again if a loved one has been affected
by mesothelioma, legal compensation is
just around the corner. As children use their
heels to scrape sulphuric tar from the
defrosting water line and then

examine candied teeth with a
knife’s thinnest glittering edge between
waves, sweat beads accumulate on
the girl’s palms like transparent
bowling balls. She holds them out and
notices tremors. Asbestos rains down.
The kids ask her to drink fluids to cure
that dry cough but all the water is
leaving to house fishes in the dictionary.

 

 

At The Open House, My Aunt
Describes How To Deadhead

My aunt trims conversation with the real
estate agent. Mentions he might come back with a better
offer. All I ever wanted was a place to call home.
Deadheading helps the flower grow fuller, stronger, clearing her
throat with chested coughs, aunt takes cuticle
scissors to infected orchid roots hanging from slatted baskets
nailed to the mantle. Rotted tissue flutters mostly
to the wood. Careful to not slice any live stems, she issues

an apology to the dead leaves. My fingertips churn pots of fern
fiber and volcanic stone. I guide her root
before packing the surface with charcoal flakes. Now firmly
planted in the coconut shell, she emits a white
lemon aura. Her silhouette morphs. Purple fragile now, swallows
moisture from the air, and begs me to sacrifice
the bloom. Mindful of keeping her from lying in water,
I pray she’ll have room when fully grown.

 

 

Carpal Tunnel

But on a molecular level, dryness. No matter
the post-op sweat — her skin, like her emotions,
remains rubbery. To live in a white box shouldn’t cost
this much: a view of the stucco roof, its squares that
protrude from the ceiling to prop up a man in blue
who’s eating a wheat bread and jelly sandwich like
it’s the last meal. Scrubs, a patchwork of used vinyl
wristbands, collect in linoleum basements like fraud.

She drops her pendant cross in a tall glass filled
with denture solution, and hangs a row of teeth
from a silver chain around her neck. Her inability
to inflect certain vowels is as if her lungs occlude
apologies. Like the important things are slipping
away, she asks about the demon men in overalls
sitting at the foot of her bed. It’s hopeful to imagine
she’s talking about the food tray cluttering her toes.

 

 

Upon Hearing Of My Uncle’s Dog-Leash
Suicide, I Realize My Own Neck Pain

His children’s only solace
is desiccation. I say
sorry, he’s hanging around
in my mind pissing himself.
The doorframe — humor and bloat
are observed by relatives,
I hate their stiff face muscles.
Were you close to him? I’m just
asking how a two hundred
fifty pound man fits in a
small mahogany box. Voice
mail condolences begin
jarring birds from telephone
pole lines. After falling through
a cracked window, their necks thud
against marble countertops.
Chaos is the only true
family history. Home-
made soggy meat loaf leaves blood
streaks along the sink’s steel walls,
but I don’t speak because none
of this can be removed with
bleach. The oven light’s broken,
treats smell guilty. Duct taped glass-
ware fails to keep the juice in,
and cellophane bubbles up
around paper plates holding
stale brownies. I’m wondering
why a blue dog leash would kill
a man. You may be seated.

 

 

BIO

L VargasLauren Vargas is currently working towards an MFA at Queens University and is a full time writing curriculum-tutor in Southern California. She believes in the power of language and poetry. Her works have previously appeared in ElevenElevenAmpersand Literary Journal, Chinquapin Literary Journal, and CalibanOnline.

 

 

 

Michael Brownstein

REHABBING THE HOUSE

by Michael Brownstein

 

Dear wife, everything is not a relationship:
the pipe below the sink leaking water
is not always an example of neglect changing everything
(old age has a hand in things, too)
this mop hair full of brownish grime
no longer able to clean surface scars
will be renewed with bleach and detergent,
even thick grass tangled into stubbornness
can be tamed with an adequate lawn mower.

Dear wife, friends are sometimes
enough. Enough to carry one day forward
into another. Night is not always a comfort,
yet it can be, and we can fix
this old house, reinvent it to ourselves.
Perhaps then you will be able to understand
thinking and passion do differ,
the full moon has the same beautiful face,
we are still invited to the canopy of the forest.

 

 

A VISIT TO THE ZOO

 

I nurture the wrong people,
gangrene girls with color scars,
small breasts like the yellow cusps of dandelion.

I have broken so many fights
the count is beyond fingers,
beyond toes.

We walk the stone paths of the zookery.
Ivy, oat, barley. Great frogs, green shade,
wood ducks, a rock ledge.
water lilies like thick fish, spotted fish,
striped fish turning delicate hoops.

We eat lunch on stone benches jutting out over water,
a breeze ghosting through spiked grass.

Swifts move through the air like Chinese fighting kites
and there by the fallen tree, an egret,
wings stronger than hunger,
wings stronger than selfishness.

My girls do not see the wood duck, the swift.
They do not see the fish, the large frog.
My girls complain about the walking,
this was a trip to the zoo,
we came to see animals

not Lake Michigan,
not the break wall,
not a rumble of rock blocking waves,
the water green gray blue,
not shells, not algae,
not sand thick with alewives.

I nurture caged girls,
meat-eating girls,
and when the rock dove lands by thrown bread,

I nurture girls who glory in the herring gull’s attack,
a rock dove retreating quickly,
wild wings sparking like fields of lasers.

 

 

WHEN THE CAR BROKE DOWN

 

we had to walk two miles into town,
the wind not the rabid raccoon we feared,
but the gentle new boy who also disliked baseball.
The fields snowbound,
streets unplowed,
sidewalks buried,
everywhere fairy dust and stars,
the sky a frozen lake, thistle and cottonwood seed.
When we passed the high school, my son said,
“The new windows look nice.”
On the bridge, he pointed to the four deer
buried to their neck,
body heat creating puddles of snow
and the four of them stared at the two of us,
unafraid, unabashed, silent.
When we entered the first store,
removed our heavy scarves
and freed our hair from hoods
hot spiced apple cider awaited us,
and at the second and at the third.
We lingered with people we knew and people we did not,
shared stories of huge snowmen,
angels we drew with our arms
and then a man much older than all of us
entered the bookstore with a large snowball.
“Perfect for packing,” he said,
tossing it out the door,
We could not wait to get home and go cross country skiing.
First tracks,
the entire landscape a stained glass in whites,
tree limbs transformed into liberty roses
and white poppies

 

 

A REGISTER FOR LIFE

I will tell you this and I will tell you this this time
In the register of the person
In the rhythm of the building
In the stepping stones of one handshake to another
In the bathroom of broken concrete and scarred walls, graffiti and cracked windows
Twice the dream came over me like fog
Only more intense
Like thunder with lightning
A crack with fire
A break in the line
I woke crying and uncomfortable.
The terrible thing about writing in the morning is you forget that someone you love can
            die
Or you never knew them before they die
Or the breath you breathe is meaningless because someone you should know is dying.
Then there is nothing left to tell.

 

 

 

BIO

Michael BrownsteinMichael H. Brownstein has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses. His work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011) and Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (Camel Saloon Press, 2012). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).

 

 

 

Amtrak

by Hannah Frishberg

 

I slept through America on a Greyhound Bus and woke up for cities I know only from 40-year-old films I’d watch on VHS tapes in my grandma’s basement, but there’s miles and miles of track between me and that musky floral plastic wrapped living room couch as thick with dust as these woods are thick with trees and cabins and boys named Washington (I imagine)

Silos round as this planet, green as algae, companies named after oceans now only so much rubble in these soupy towns churning out noodles, and I remember where I am from people are as complicated as telephone wires but here everything is muffled by moss and cars crawl by like giant ants on the freeway, crawling across the horizon as I steam through America

I stare until my vision goes fuzzy and picture Iroquois between the grass, which only lives to grow, whispering the secrets of the soil to me through dirty plate glass windows, the backside of billboards in Baltimore, this town of broken glass and baseball, smoke stacks and advertisements for things gone long before I came

Boxcars stacked like Legos, these homes are shanties, no one lives here, and you’re a million times my senior, Baltimore, but I want to kiss each broken shard of your glass till my bloody lips are a map of your windows, and be as complacent in my own decay

These cities are islands of humanity amidst the trackside wilderness, floating like the gardens of Babylon, industrial relics alight in a sea of leaves and Little League and cherry blossoms every few miles among the parked cars and baggage, among the endless tracks and train cars who alone have seen the edges of America

Land of radio towers, as vast and quiet as the open sky, endless attics and fields of green and a water tower in the distance! Blooming big and blue! A truck depot! And the clouds seem bigger. Buildings standing on three legs with little boys on top blowing kisses to the setting sun, and the boy sitting next to me, fast asleep

We’re almost there, and I can see the border of summer is clouded by rain and floating petals
sneezed into the atmosphere, in front of me like a mirage waving back as we slow down for the Last Stop All Passengers Out.

 


Danse Macabre

 

MEDICAL RELEASE: On 3-11-2004, at approximately 3:45 AM, personnel from the Kings County Emergency Care Center responded to a report of uncontrollable dancing in front of a pharmacy at 4752 Cropsey Avenue. A small crowd had gathered to watch a young woman, possessed with what was posthumously diagnosed as terminal Boogie Fever, dance her life away in the middle of the street. She’d been there for hours, one woman said, performing every Latin American dance in alphabetical order, except for when an elderly gentleman asked to mambo even though she’d only just finished the bomba. She hasn’t said a word, one boy noted, but 27 separate prescriptions have fallen from her coat pocket. Tony can’t stop tapping I think it’s contagious, a lady shrieked, corralling her children away from the scene. Witnesses verify that, in the month of February alone, the ailing female had been seen waltzing in Westchester, cha-chaing in Chinatown, swinging in Sunnyside, Lindy Hopping in Little Neck, and twerking in Tribeca. In Ozone Park, she remained on point for two weeks until her nails peeled up and rats gnawed off her toes. Two pre-med students on Staten Island measured her heart beats with a snare drum and approximated that she spun at the same rate as the world. Construction workers in Throggs Neck observed that neither thunderclaps nor wrecking balls made her miss a beat, and thus theorized she was being rocked by the City itself. It was at 5:32 AM (sunrise, exactly) that she danced herself to death, sporadic fireworks erupting from her ears as she tripped on cement in the middle of a dougie and bled out through her feet. Upon autopsy, no space could be found between the bruises on her calves, and it was discovered her brain had over oxidized on street lights. Her insides were a nasty bloody failure, her ribcage in pieces, her heart in shreds, her mind in shards. The body was too broken to be buried; instead it was cremated. At the exact moment the ashes were released into the Hudson, 36 different FM radio broadcasts across the Tri-state area were interrupted by a whispered:
Oh baby, do you wanna dance?


 

This Social Generation

 

I. Children in the time of technological revolution,
We are united in our conformity
To the blue paneled man.
We congregate on this combat zone of words,
Of suicide notes, soul-searchers, and virtual love,
To sacrifice our time
And privacy
In exchange for pixelated satisfaction.
We send our thoughts and feelings out to sea
On emoticon-ships and status updates,
Trusting the world will see
And care
About our wants and whims.
A generation lost online,
Individual personalities somewhat discernable
Between the crotch shots and the Photoshop,
The likes and the favorites,
Not flesh and blood but binary code
And computer innards.
Deleting loneliness by logging in,
The world grows larger
By becoming small enough to understand.
The exponential growth of pixels
The cancerous growth of machines
Our lives morph to fit into computer screens.
Wasting time, crossing space
The fabric of emotion unthreading into shapes.
We are natives to this electronic existence,
Fluent in its language.
We translate our dreams, translate our lives,
And feed them to the void.

II. On all fours,
The night falls back out of our mouths
As the world is filtered into colored light
And the human body decomposes into textured shapes.
Piss and blood and laughter
And that perpetual bassline
All surge and ebb with the beat of our healthy hearts.
Only we appreciate the many tiered flavor
Of a 3AM Mickey D’s cheeseburger,
The perfect smear
Of morning-after eyeliner,
The taste of a night shared with a smoker.
We treasure a day’s quirks
And never look at the bigger picture.
And though the lyrics don’t make sense
We respond to that bassline
Always the bassline
Trying to thrash out the music
Drink out the music
Forget the music,
The bassline.
God is long gone,
Heaven along with him,
And the static electricity in our bodies
Is far greater than any force in hell.
We are draped in shadows
And the night is cheering us on,
The chemicals in what we do so much stronger
Than the chemicals in what we are.
We are animals
Looking for the warmth of a whisper
The warmth of a body
With whom to share a cigarette
With whom to share these sunless hours
With whom to share this long winter.
Because it is cold
And snow is much softer
When there are two bodies in a nest.

 

 

 

 

BIO

Hannah FrishbergHannah Frishberg is a freelance writer and photographer whose work has previously appeared in the Huffington Post, Gothamist, Narratively, Curbed, Atlas Obscura, and Urban Omnibus, among others. She is a fourth generation Brooklynite and is working on a book about the Gowanus Batcave.

 

 

 

Rene Ostberg

Bioluminescent Bay

by René Ostberg

 

I want this to be easy.
Like blink and we’re there easy
think and it’s done easy
wish and you’re here.
I don’t want the involvement of any effort on my part.
Don’t bring me to the luminescence
bring the luminescence to me.
None of this waiting for a new moon
banging around in the blackness with strangers
keeping kayaks in a line
swinging paddles through the Puerto Rican deep.
They tell us:
put your hands overboard
wiggle your fingers in the water
watch the little creatures crackle to light.
Little dinos, little flagellates.
I imagine a tiny long-tailed brontosaur,
a billion of ‘em, biting my rude huge hand
defanged piranha zygotes
lost in the Caribbean. It’s a long way
from the Amazon, a long way from the Mississippi
a long way from the Mesozoic.
I imagine a shiny long-tailed comet,
just one of ‘em, igniting my rude huge planet
smashing the dinos to bits
soldering speck-sized lights into their dino DNA.
The dinosaurs never died away.
They didn’t evolve into rhinos or birds.
They colonized the Caribbean
turned the Puerto Rican tides into a star show
you can swim in.
I want this to be easy so
I do what I’m told:
put my hand overboard
wiggle my fingers in the water
watch the little creatures
the little comet bedazzled buggers
crackle and roar to light.
I’ve come a long way from the Mississippi
for this.

 

 

Aisling

 

There are no locks. There are only high sand hills
which the woman in the house would not feel safe
without. Whenever the sun shines she thinks it’s a
gift from the gods of defense. The sun turns the sand
to coals the hills to flames and no one can get over
and in without a struggle.

The house has hardly a roof. The floors are flooded
with sand so the woman hears the wind whenever
she steps. She sees trees in the dunes and the horizon
through the trees and the lake below the horizon. She
looks for prowlers on the beach and watches them
drown climbing the dunes.

One day she sees the lake and the horizon congeal
to clouds she thinks or jelled waves. Something
is coming. The clouds are beasts cows like bulls running
to land and women like warriors with white skin wild
hair whale eyes and dark stiff dresses. The horizon
churns brown. The woman in the house runs but
has no chance. The sand on the floor is not meant
for more than a pacing.

A girl in a green dress appears and dances into
a side door. The woman spins her around and steers
her out. This is no time for turning mother. The cows
have jumped the hills. The women ride on their
backs. They surround the house and call the woman
across the sand. They list her looks her eyes like
theirs her skin the same her hair an echo of
the speed that they can run. But her arms move
different waving loose like the women’s
hair and the cows’ tails.

The woman in the house gathers the men around
her the ones she never trusted the ones the hills
kept out before needing their protection. They run
to a room that rises higher than the dunes and higher
than the women astride their beasts. There are open
windows in the room. The men lean out and laugh
and push the woman ahead.

The women on the beasts beat their chests and cry
a word that the woman hears but doesn’t know. She
feels her face sharpening her body rising with a rush
of air and she starts to circle the sand hills. She chases
the men down the dunes to the lake to the beach
ravaged by the cows to the dung pits made by the beasts
while the women take the house and call the woman back
to come land on their hands.

The women stay on. The men never return. The woman
circles the land that used to be her home. She circles
most at sunset while the women watch her fly and
list her looks every time she turns to home. The beasts
prowl the dunes and watch the horizon. They have no
memory of the opposite side they only see
a sun burning the lake.

 

 

Coconut

 

A smell is not a soul. If only it were
I would have made you my wife
made your scent my mate for life.

We kissed against the wet stone walls
me leaning into you you leaning into stone
your back suffering the jabs of rock
making dents vents for your coconut scent.

Put your arms around me the scent whispered.
Trust me it told me ghosting itself around me
haloing our embrace. But your mouth
your soft speaking mouth your clutching
tongue tasted of need.
It clashed with the cigarettes I’d swallowed
soured the beer I drowned every night.
…And I never could stand the smack
of a woman’s desperation.

When we made it to a bed made our bodies bare
I melted above your smell became a ghost
of a man haloed by your arms your legs
your lips. By the time we were done
your scent made my body soft
my pores opened wide as the wounds
in your back. My drowned man’s
aroma drunk man’s
corona beer sweat
and cigarettes
unholy trio
unsoulful
so unlike
your smell
coconut.

I don’t blame you for being gone before morning.
You never could stand the smack
of a man’s desperation. You left
behind what I was after anyway. Your mouth
your soft clutching tongue your soul
your arms
your scent
a halo around me.

 

 

BIO

Rene OstbergRené Ostberg is a native Chicagoan who still resides in Illinois. She writes a blog with a travel theme called ‘Writing and Wayfaring’. Her writing and photography have been featured at Drunk Monkeys, Literary Orphans, Booma: The Bookmapping Project, Eunoia Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, We Said Go Travel, Rockwell’s Camera Phone, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica blog, among other places. You can read more of her work at reneostberg.wordpress.com.

 

 

 

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