Unfettered Verse: a journal of poetry

June 2010

2010-05-31T09:41:00.000-07:00

This month features Russell Streur and Stephen Jarrell Williams

Russell Streur

SIX ROSES

The last six roses my father planted
Bloom at autumn’s end
Red against the dun and rust of the river bank.

I expected to hear his ghost
Snoring in this house tonight
Loud enough to wake the living.

Instead I hear my mother pacing quietly
Through these rooms in starlight and green slippers
Afraid to wake the dead.

PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN WITH PINE CONES

She paints her legs
In sedge and meadow rue
Hikes Mill Trail
In timber steps
Through oak and hickory
To calypso time

She is thin this morning
One of the old ones here
Who stayed behind
In stream and wood
With owls in her hair
And pine cones at her waist

More like sunlight
Than ever.

BEATNIK GIRL

I am looking for the beatnik girl
Who quotes Neruda in her sleep
Who worries in the morning what exactly Johnny meant
When he whispered truth is beauty to an urn

And I am looking for the beatnik girl
Who knows all about the opera in Tempe
Modigliani nudes in the spring adieu
Deluge in Arcady and the Legend Duluoz

And I am looking for the beatnik girl
To walk with me through Attic weeds to mountain citadel
With garlands on her thighs an age apart from woe
That girl of silken grace and sliest text who really likes

Late night jazz
On the radio.

Russell Streur is a resident of Atlanta, Georgia. His works have appeared in 63
Channels, The American DIssident, Half Drunk Muse, Juked, Lost, Megaera, Raving
Dove, Poems Niederngasse (Switzerland) and The Blanket (Ireland).

Stephen Jarrell Williams

SEA OF DREAMS

We will come together
With the unstoppable tide
Of those that do not know us

Their disasters slicing through the sea
Blood like wine fading into the depths

The white sandy bottom soft as your breasts
Staring up to me in the blur of a dream

I will never awake
Never swim far from your reach

Your dazzling eyes seeing
World of the underneath waters

Your fingers and toes waving me in.

ESCAPE

When they lose interest in us
We will sneak away
From under their weight
Finding grace in each others arms

Riding the crest of waves
Side by side
Endless speed-thrill
Hand in hand

Our faces in the spray
Cheering our escape

The sea vast ahead of us.

DRUMS

Turning over from a dream,
opening eyes to
a white sheet across a span of surprise.

You are there sleeping,
tranquil as a tropical isle
inviting a touch.

Your hair flowing vines
capturing my fingers,
drawing me closer.

Drums beginning to beat far within
your reawakening.

Stephen Jarrell Williams has been called "The Poet of Doom," "A Voice in the Wilderness," and "A Minstrel for Love." He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California. His poetry has appeared in Aoife's Kiss, Aphelion, Blue Collar Review, The Broome Review, Camroc Press Review, Censored Poets, Chronogram Magazine, Deuce Coupe, Fissure Magazine, Freefall, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Hawaii Review, Heroin Love Songs, Hungur, Is This Reality, Kalkion, Liquid Imagination, Mad Swirl, Metazen, Mirror Dance, Neonbeam, Nerve Cowboy, Nomad's Choir, POEM, Poesia, Posey, protestpoems.org, Purpose, REAL, Rusty Truck, Scifaikuest, Sex And Murder, Shoots And Vines, Tales from the Moonlit Path, Thieves Jargon, Unfettered Verse, Zygote In My Coffee, and others.

May 2010

2010-04-30T11:58:00.001-07:00

Photo Courtesy of Dave Rubio, CA

This month features Felino Soriano and Russell Jaffe

Felino Soriano

Approbations 211
—after Antonio Faraò’s I’m Waiting

Deprivation self-enforced, night’s usual
temperament
allowing ventures into undulating dreams,
held episodic memories
debating within a mind of delusional
combat, ecstatic contours of butterfly’s
unusual flutter. Sleep
not yet here, I’m waiting
says the prison eyes
watching a ceiling of humdrum existence
count back to me recollected habits,
those of the mannerisms physical in matter,
riding solitude into segregated
demise.

Approbations 213
—after Russell Gunn’s You Don’t Know What Love Is

Paint
falling
from the avenue of angles
light ambulates, urgently. Fingers
of tonal diligence
fondles yarn-thick species
of entangled illusion; below
the legs of clouds
snow pushes indented temperatures,
solid.

These areas,
emotional inclusions of desolate beginnings, love, love
yes, the organic quiet times of
discovering Aphrodite.

Approbations 215
—after Roy Hargrove’s Starmaker

Evening of cotton-light graying weight
wears imagination as a scarf’s
draping symbol, attribution
warmth, protected fathom
outer curl most notable
creation. Eyes formulate
concept of questionnaire’s gossip,
stare among sleeping nescience,
routine in environmental leaders
conjuring blank and absent
participation. Divorced evidence
although sky’s black backlit evidence
cremates variant assumption, dialogue long gone,
current features of questionless
au courant seekers.

Felino A. Soriano (b. 1974), is a case manager and advocate for developmentally and physically disabled adults. He has authored 23 collections of poetry, including “Altered Aesthetics” (ungovernable press, 2009), “Construed Implications” (erbacce-press, 2009), and “Delineated Functions of Congregated Constructs” (Calliope Nerve Media, 2010). His poems have appeared at Calliope Nerve, Full of Crow, BlazeVOX, Metazen, Heavy Bear, and elsewhere. He edits & publishes Counterexample Poetics, an online journal of experimental artistry, and Differentia Press, dedicated to publishing e-chapbooks of experimental poetry. Philosophical studies collocated with his connection to classic and avant-garde jazz explains motivation for poetic occurrences. His website explains further: www.felinoasoriano.info.

Russell Jaffe

Farm
Hooves meet dirt in what otherwise is a collision, what before is cherished and
dinner, what eventually is timely and weathered. Yellows turn orange, black turns
light gray, and edges fold in and up. Pictures are wrapped like shelf cans: Rust and twists, they are open.

The dead stalks in meadows burn with dead
twigs. Flying up from the smoke are upwards bees.
Yellow: the sky. Yellow, brown, the dirt, brown, the stables.

The ancient wood in the collapsed barn surrounded by grass is just one of a series
of interconnected countryside hieroglyphics. The Great Wall of America is made of wheat and is golder than sand.
Understated grains move slower than a dead road. Traffic light red, green,
and yellow: peppers. But dirt is immediate, brown is now, hills green slices of gold, night shows up. Stars swagger in, wasted. The moon shows up and fucks everything up.

Flowers Invited

*I put the flowers in a vase, and the vase on my shelf.
I don’t understand the errant misdirection of things.
Still, the flowers come with food, water, and vase. I hold the flowers in one hand, I cut them with another.
Petals fall down the crooks of my pressed palms into the sink.

*I would hate to tell you what to think, but it is the right season.
I am in school still, but I am authentic;
I am an architect of flowers. I know, because I have seen them stomped.

*I sat with a few friends in a dead meadow.
Listen: it was becoming rapidly becoming night, chasing us like dogs in a fever summer,
waiting for things to grow again. But their faces were orange white in a close knit association of light.
The surrounding trees were still and very dark, and if I hadn’t known they were there,
I would have seen the group us as puppets, with only the important features accentuated.
Something moved us through the meadow where the first flowers were starting to bud under the flakes of dying ice.

*There are some plants that do better in the shade, and there are other plants which leech off other plants to live.
I am still in school, but the cold is starting to subside,
and you don’t need to worry about me because I choose flowers and
not predator plants or anything that would hide;

*Color, like mist, is creeping out above the meadow like it does above the ice downtown.
The petals of various flowers are stomped sometimes
and crushed: now the juices from berries in the shade leak up my wrist, now they fall on flowers growing in the light outside where I withdraw my arm.
*Now it is finally my hand.

Russell Jaffe teaches English at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, IA and holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia College in Chicago. His poems have appeared in Shampoo, MiPOesias, The Portland Review, Spooky Boyfriend, Writer’s Bloc, and others. Additionally, he writes a hot sauce review blog called Good Hurts.

April 2010

2010-03-31T17:34:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy of Dave Rubio

This month features Dave Rubio and Keith Moul

Dave Rubio

A Song to Morning

It was the hour of the long shadows.
Dew becomes visible
and sweeps a blade of grass.

In mere moments mist is relieved
of the temporary burden
of being liquid.

Air is relieved
of life as mist
Transforming into the crispness
of the morn.

There is no mourning
for the morning.

So sing the shadows
to the dew and the air.

The Ukelele

He strummed the ukulele in a hauntingly Spanish fashion.
Conversations stopped as he became the distraction.
Soon she began to hum;
Softly…quietly…became the beat…the rhythm.

Her husband followed suit.
In mid stride he chimed into the action.
She hit a low, he hit a high.
Sometimes the only way to distinguish them
Was only by the naked eye.

Let’s not forget about that ukulele guy.
He was keeping pace with their rhythm
Flowing to their speed,
And as he took a moment to gaze up
He heard other voices joined the fun.
Mothers, fathers
Sons and daughters
All around began to hum.

Just from one ukulele strum.
A “voice-o-plenty” was beginning to harvest
All the seasons gold.
Currently perpetrating a reason
To never feel old.

And as quickly as it had come
The last ukulele strum
In its afterglow…the hum

What transpired after that?
Well silly smiles and friendship laughter.
A memory they will take
Into the hereafter.

Half as Much

Let's go outside.
I want to watch the breeze
Blow through your hair.

She says

I want to see if it looks the same
as when I run my fingers through them.

Although I know it looks different, I want to see
How nature embraces you with its longing kisses.

Does it love you half as much as I do?

Just let me see.
If you do to the world
Half of what you do to me.

Dave lives and writes in CA. He also takes great pictures.

Keith Moul

TAKING HIM STRAIGHT

They had agreed that her crime
would not be labeled theft--
but surely she had taken:

him straight,

in his purest, hardest
most unadulterated form,

both strongest and weakest
like blue laser, sky
or water over falls,
content with nothing,
after everything;

and he had burned her eyes,
her fingers, her tongue;

he had twisted great love
and woven it with many regrets.

But she got her therapy
and stayed….

TAKING HIMSELF SERIOUSLY

They had agreed that his crime
would not be labeled theft--
but surely he had taken:

himself seriously:

on a charming river
in Ontario
armed with a lever-action
Marlin .30-.30;

in his Volkswagen van-
stage, bearded
and herring-boned;

as a high school prospect
of the major leagues
when in his mind
he won a roster spot;

and she winced with him
when the mirror
twisted each feature
of his morning face.

TAKING PAINS

They had agreed that her crime
would not be labeled theft--
but surely she had taken:

pains,

without asking, certainly,
but with no malice of spirit.

In the manner of a trash collector
with an eye to locate
in a heap the rarest of all pains;
in the mood of a child
with a leg up on wisdom
she carted off her treasures
to her private cache--
and only when prodded
would model them
on glittering occasions.

In time, symptoms develop
and lodge in the flesh.

KEITH'S POEMS HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN THE US, CANADA AND BRITAIN FOR MORE THAN 40 YEARS. THESE ARE FROM A SEQUENCE OF WHAT HE CALLS IDIOMATIC POEMS. EACH BEGINS WITH A COMMON IDIOM USING THE VERB TO TAKE. THE POEMS THEN EXPAND THAT MEANING INTO SOMETHING NEW. KEITH LIVES IN WASHINGTON STATE.KEITH HAS PUBLISHED QUITE A BIT, IS NOW RETIRED AND CONTINUES TO WRITE, BUT IN A MORE DEDICATED WAY.

March 2010

2010-02-28T11:48:00.001-08:00

This month features Stephen Jarrell Williams, Derek Richards and John Sibley Williams

Stephen Jarrell Williams

SWEEP OF TIDES

We're stroking
Through deep water
Content and tireless.

We shed our clothes
From the other world...

We sparkle
Within the sheen of the sea.

The beginning is
Always like this...

Our essence
One
In the sweep of tides.

SWIMMING

The slow roll of the sea under us
Taking it out as far as we dare

You're so adventurous in the nude
Gliding through water

Head up grinning
Squinting in sun and beads of sea

Your backside teasing with glimpses
Lean and oiled

I warn we should turn back
But you keep spearing ahead

I follow until I've had enough
Pulling you back to shore

Carrying you under my arm
Through a people-packed beach

You're waving playfully to all the wide eyes
Wishing they were me

Not knowing
You're so slippery when wet

Having your own mind
Your own tide of emotions.

DISCOVERY

Underwater bubbles rising for the surface.
Hold on and forever will come.

Lungs Burning. Legs and feet kicking.
Puncture of liquid into air.

Don't be bitter with the past
Seemingly everywhere.

I'm giving you what I know of women.
I've known few. I admit.

I've been an island since birt h.
Volcanic and tranquil
In a deep jungle making my clearing.

I coaxed you to shore. Soft sand.
Showed you my best side.
The wind blowing you answers.

So much more to share
In the shadows
And sun of discovery.

Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to write, listen to his music, and dance late into the night. He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California. His poetry has appeared here and there and in-between...

Derek Richards

praising chaos

chronic deflation arrested by upheavel,
further indisputable proof
the chaos theory
is crucial for my healing.

when has the violent gust of broken glass
sunk me into melancholy
instead of wild-iris?
a halo of angst
as prodigal colors reversed.

whimsical glimpses of peace and rest
are as deadly as rush hour mirages.
it is by their glow my pulse expands,
sipping on adrenaline
until decades
play out
between thumps.

i'm going out.
call me when the world tilts angry,
when the zagging hum of disheveled place
crashes into honest brutal time.
and then i will hurry home,

gasping for breath, out of tune,
relieved.

decomposition: telling secrets

no one ever wanted
to be a poet
more than Jasmine
a thesaurus stole her virginity
long before Carlos

synonyms offered more orgasm
the pale skin of unhealthy rhyme
photosynthesized

depression
into soul
luxury into destitute

daydreams consisted of suburban ovens
choking black her head
like Sylvia
like dull green five-subject notebooks

suddenly aflame
an entire history of adjectives
written between her thumbs

she couldn't quite figure how John fit in
the silent-punk-rock-star
always read her words like they were foreplay

and then he would come

leave nothing but
you're too honest,
no one likes you because you divulge everything

Jasmine will stare a blank page
into oblivion
waiting for a pause to excuse static

she excels at English Lit
has even learned the nuances of Latin,
breathes easy the lazy nouns
of Spanish,

wishing Carlos still came around

blood drips into gravy

when cut-wrist-blood adds flavor to the salisbury steak television dinner
gravy swaying gently on your thighs
maybe the once-a-week therapy sessions are nothing more than
quick-slip-fucks to your insurance company
and the heroin eyes sneaking up on you each morning
are more stone culprit than actual existence

to move a blue-heavy arm away like it's a twenty-pound fly
aggravating your routine is something worth examining without
a clipboard-bearded professional providing multiple options
jenny-jane wants you to go back to deep-sea fishing
because at least then you were only drinking straight-gut-whiskey
heroin just makes you think smart and fuck dumb
hours and hours of limp-intellect-laziness

at least when you were drunk, you'd bring me flowers
of course she never mentions your ability to watch endless hours
of daytime soap-opera television, your soft-kind-manners
early-on in the relationship she confided that she liked you better
when you smelled dirty, sweaty, that it made her growl
hangovers make you want to shower, hot water, cold towels
this is like a baked oven creating blanket-thick layers

it certainly wasn't any fun calling 911 and reporting on noah,
cops and medics all circling in vulture loops, licking like lizards
but somewhere the brain-garage knew it was all a performance
and soon silence would return if she could just stop talking
how could you promise me stability being nothing but a junkie?
i do know there is another television dinner in the freezer,
chicken nuggets with macaroni and cheese, a blueberry muffin
noah and his dripping-blood-wrist-distraction, gone just as today
slides on up to midnight, vacant and silent, after-dead

After failing miserably as a rock star, Derek Richards began submitting his poetry, August 2009. Over 140 of his poems have appeared in over seventy publications, including Lung, Breadcrumb Scabs, MediaVirus, Calliope Nerve, tinfoildresses, Opium 2.0, Dew on the Kudzu, Sex and Murder, Splash of Red and fourpaperletters. He has also been told to keep his day job by Quills and Parchment. Nothing annoys him more than poetry written solely to make someone feel stupid. His ferret, cat and puppy couldn't agree more. Happily engaged, he resides in Gloucester, MA., cleaning windows for a livng.

John Sibley Williams

Keep Driving

Fluent in the dialects of skyline
two empty silos raise like Braille
above the babbling wheat earth
and pause for a moment upon an early frost
spread evenly across its mother’s lap,
a winter in tow,
furious wingbeats of sun
grown desperate in the long-plowed furrows,
all elements reading each other knowingly,
as an experience feels itself shift to dream,
all silently mouthing in a united cloud of breath:

keep driving, dead man,
farther west the chill has yet descended.

Surely I’m Convinced

a word understood must have been uttered aloud.

a word uttered must travel vast distances
to define itself.

one word will some day imbue
the rest with meaning.

Surely I’m Convinced

the winter wind speaks
to one person at a time,
and just now I possess its conversation.

the snow owl communicates with god
through its wake of rodent bones and fur.

utter silence has no counterpart.

Kafka

Around the same time he affixed feathers, wings,
so too a wire-meshed pen,
and hunched over his meager seed allowance
commenced to peck at his cage.

Years forgot themselves
as housecats their missing claws
and though he pecked still
well after he’d razed the pen,
savagely attacking empty air
as if it held his freedom,
this ongoing dust worship
finally took the place of flight.

John has an MA in Writing and resides in Portland, OR, where he frequently performs his poetry and studies Book Publishing at Portland State University. He is presently compiling manuscripts composed from the last two years of traveling and living abroad. Some of his over eighty previous or upcoming publications include: The Evansville Review, Flint Hills Review, Open Letters, Cadillac Cicatrix, Juked, The Journal, Hawaii Review, Barnwood International Poetry, Concho River Review, Paradigm, Red Wheelbarrow, Aries, Other Rooms, The Alembic, Clapboard House, River Oak Review, Glass, Miranda, and Raving Dove.

"when you can't compose yourself, compose a poem"
---http://jswilliamspoetry.blogspot.com

February 2009

2010-01-31T09:29:00.000-08:00

This month features Daniel Wilcox, Sergio Ortiz and
Stephen Jarrell Williams

Daniel Wilcox

Midnight Voyager

(Previously published in La Fenetre in France)

Past muggy midnight,
Working 7-11 on the late shift,
I’m the moonlighting student
Washing the wall-to-wall glass outside,

Pushing the strong pole up and down
In the fogged, moist
Huntington Beach night,
Then I go inside and stock shelves with the last

Of the cans--sweet peaches, chili and meat,
And wait on the handful of customers,
A trucker, two teen cruisers, and an elderly gent.
Later a friendly Mexican family comes in

With 5 rambunctious kids
Going who knows where at 3 A.M.,
No doubt journeying far.
While the kids scamper in lively dances

And the parents load up a large basket,
The door chime sounds
And a comely young woman strolls in,
Frilly skirt swaying;

She walks to the cooler in the back,
Side steps two running boys,
And returns to the counter
With an Orange Crush

Smiling up at me,
Where I’m reading “Recuerdo”
By Millay from my college text--
The girl leans forward on the counter,

Her green blouse like a palm-frond basket
In the market, the partially open scarf
Revealing her harvest,
Two soft mangoes, succulent skin.

She looks up, her soft eyes
Large and luminous;
I return her warm smile, then look away
To the permanent ‘Keys’

On the register;
Rejecting the easy way, the brief flush and rise,
Longing instead for the music
That moves the invisible spheres,

The endless, passionate ‘reel.’
No voyeur, I am a midnight voyager
Journeying toward another country
Like the Hebrews, longing for the hidden one.

Daniel Wilcox earned his degree in Creative Writing from Cal State Long Beach. A former activist, teacher, and wanderer from Montana to the Middle East, he casts his lines out upon the world's turbulent waters and wide shores in Static Movement, Lunarosity, The Recusant, Counterexample Poetics, Tipton Poetry Journal, outwardlink.net, etc. Dark Energy, a book of his poetry, was published in 2009 by Diminuendo Press. "The Faces of Stone", based on his time in the Middle East, came out in The Danforth Review and Danse Macabre. Daniel lives with a speculative novel The Feeling of the Earth, a second volume of poems Psalms, Yawps, and Howls, and his wife on the central coast of California.

Sergio Ortiz

The Miles

A life to serve under the brightness
of elongated moons,

a deeply secret road where my fingers braid
an endless thread of plenty around your spur,
the bank of our first dawn together—
tearing at my pollen walls.

Pleasant: the labyrinth of temperate water,
Fear: a premonition of the spiraling
absence in the sweetness of your voice,
miles of all that could have been.

on the other side

of a snowflake
set on fire

a kingdom appears
where shadows whisper
“caramel”

he turns, stares at
eagerness

undone

Mama got AIDS from an enemy soldier

We walked five miles to the nearest waterhole.
A baldin’ boogeyman convoy
left her for dead by the roadside.
We ran—three little birds (cryin’ and cryin’).

My brother stayed in my head—boogeyman’s body
sucking his breath (yellin’ and yellin’) yeah
(yellin’ and yellin). He’ll live, or I’ll shut him myself.

Death (wow - wow - wow) sprawled like a lizard.
Papa (whoo - whoo - whoo) tore off
his ankle bracelet and went for the gun.

Ortiz has a B.A. in English literature from Inter-American University, and a
M.A. in Philosophy from World University. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in: Autumn Sky Poetry, 3LightsGallery, The Smoking Poet, The Acentos Review, Poesia, and Words-Myth.

Stephen Jarrell Williams

ODYSSEY SPILLING

I know you're coming
Down the long journey of atheism.
Your mind an odyssey spilling
A valiant woman

In the arms of loneliness,
Washing you onto my island,

Sleek your hip above water,
Horizontal paradise

I run my hand along
The path to your peak and climax.
Let it go sky-high
I'll catch you,

Bring you in
Easy and evermore,

On our be of sand
Softhearted an rocking,

Swaying beside the waves,
An inlet beginning to glisten.

I'm your god...
And you're my god....

ISLAND OUTLOOK

Sitting together staring across the sea,
Indian style with naked knees touching
Rainbow orbs dancing over the waves,

Pretty woman,
Stunner,
Peach,
Pearl
Sunlight over your face,

Watching you out of the corner of my eye,
Sweet scent in the breeze,
Wind changer,

Sun douser,
Take me under

Back-and-forth,
Breathing below the waters you stir,

Dragging me gasping onto the beach,
Laughing with you holding me
Wet skin to skin,
Heaving sea,

Drying in the sand,
Palm fronds swaying above,
Bamboo sprouting thick as your desire.

SEAHORSE

Hold on...

The sea calling us...

Running across the beach,
Kicking sand back into the dark,

I gallop
Splashing,
Busting through waves,

Heat of day still attached,
Your legs around me,

Riding on my back
Out into the forever
Of us....

Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to write, listen to his music, and dance late into the night. He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California. His poetry has appeared in Aoife's Kiss, Aphelion, Blue Collar Review, The Broome Review, Camroc Press Review, Censored Poets, Chronogram Magazine, Deuce Coupe, Fissure Magazine, Freefall, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Hawaii Review, Heroin Love Songs, Hungur, Is This Reality, Kalkion, Liquid Imagination, Mad Swirl, Metazen, Mirror Dance, Neonbeam, Nerve Cowboy, Nomad's Choir, POEM, Poesia, Posey, protestpoems.org, Purpose, REAL, Rusty Truck, Scifaikuest, Sex And Murder, Shoots And Vines, Tales from the Moonlit Path, Thieves jargon, Unfettered Verse, Zygote In my Coffee, and others.

January 2010

2009-12-31T10:24:00.000-08:00

Photo courtesy of Dave Rubio, CA

This month features Felino Soriano and John Grey

Felino Soriano

Painters’ Exhalations 763
—after Made Agteus Widarta’s Play Kites

Kites disrupt nap of
various angles. Angles awakened
through prosperous algebra. A priori
to the hitherto darkness of
specialized naiveté, aerial reinterpretations
galvanize meaning of
wondrous smiles, watching
figurative density relocate within
weightless mentions of decorative
plumage.

Painters’ Exhalations 766
—after Cecilia Lostaunau’s Limbo

Which is the more sacred?

Mountain’s balled hand
raised in knuckled fury, distanced.

Water’s open hand, blue lines of moving
prophecy, near.

If both are
untainted by the wishing minds of voice-body conjurers,
equality of sufficient milieu
divides encyclopedic sentences
along bodies of dualistic sameness
wearing altered differences of
disparate wardrobes.

Painters’ Exhalations 767
—after Nitaya Tamwong’s Morning in Winter II

Hand has not yet killed purled pink
of frangipani blossom. Her scent still a
twirling leap, landing on individualized hairs
climbing for exit from nose’s sneezing
marvel. The vertical of her petals
like stilled wings of hummingbird’s rest
from blurring flight. In day’s of forthcoming echoes,
remembering alive of her, turns the head
down in contemplation, recalling
the center’s radiant applause.

Felino A. Soriano (b. 1974, California), is a case manager and advocate for developmentally and physically disabled adults. He has authored 18 collections of poetry, including “Altered Aesthetics” (ungovernable press, 2009),and “Construed Implications” (erbacce-press, 2009). His poems have appeared at Calliope Nerve, Full of Crow, BlazeVOX, Metazen, Heavy Bear, and elsewhere. He edits & publishes Counterexample Poetics, www.counterexamplepoetics.com,an online journal of experimental artistry, and Differentia Press, www.differentiapress.com, dedicated to publishing e-chapbooks of experimental poetry. He is also a contributing editor for Sugar Mule, www.sugarmule.com, and con=ulting editor for Post: A Journal of Thought and Feeling, www.postjournalofthoughtandfeeling.com/a>. Philosophical studies collocated with his connection to classic and avant-garde jazz explains motivation for poetic occurrences. His website explains further: www.felinoasoriano.info/

John Grey

COINCIDENTLY

Melanie (I forget her last name) could have been
partner in this fine collection of James Bond DVD's.
And Cynthia (there were girls called Cynthia in those days)

was the heir apparent to my socks, my jeans,
my collection of albums by obscure British rock groups
but she didn't wait around to hear the will.

When I pay bills, it could have been out of the
mutual checking account of myself and Michelle,
posted in envelopes that Jennie and I purchased at the CVS together.

I live in rooms where Susan's and my salary combined
could have easily met the rent
and the number of women who might now be feeling

these lips pressing against theirs exceed the female population
of mid-size towns. It's all luck that finally settles it.
It's all coincidence or something.

For I live with one person and it's none
of these names I mentioned. Gale and I fell in love.
And that out of all the things we might have fell in.

THE ONES WHO TELL YOU WHAT TO DO

They're tired of twittering among themselves.
Now they come right out and say it.
"When are you having a baby?"
The years you've been married, apparently,
are part of a formula.
They keep repeating that number,
reprimand you with it.
The other side of the equation
is will it be a boy or a girl.
And there's the law of intended consequences to deal with.
Once you've had one
can the second be far behind.

They're persistent that's for sure.
They don't want to hear how you're scraping together
the deposit for a new home.
Or you could really use a second car.
You show them the holes in your living room furniture.
One even sits on the couch with the untrustworthy spring.
The more it digs into her
the more she feels for your idle womb.

Your husband will be home soon.
You want them to leave before he gets there
but you're too polite to show them the door.
You could tell them you'll start a family
when the time is right.
But they'd just reset their watches.
And wait.

JUST CONVERSATIONAL

I arrive at eight o clock.
Leslie and I have been friends
since we were kids.
Not sure why
but, as two people,
we've always got along
in some way or other.
It works best when we don't think about it.
Same sense of humor helps.
Shared experiences
and then the few where our paths diverge
but conversation brings back into line. Vacation in Florida... no problem...
talk about it enough and we both were there.
Broken relationships...
so much empathy,
it's like I broke up with her man,
she with my woman.
We sit and talk, drink coffee, nibble on snacks,
and before we know it, it's midnight
and I leave.
Four hours where nothing gets lived
to give living a chance to catch up.

December 2009

2009-11-30T09:16:00.000-08:00

This month features G. Tod Slone and Ken Radu

G. Tod Slone

Statement of Teaching Philosophy*
(Or Recipe for Failure in Today’s American Colleges and Universities)

Go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

Speak truth, write truth,
be aware of the blinders you adorn!

Speak truth, write truth,
dare remove them, here and there!

Speak truth, write truth,
be aware of the muzzle you have on!

Speak truth, write truth,
risk taking it off, now and then!

Speak truth, write truth,
toughen up
—don’t be so easily offended—
democracy depends on it!

Speak truth, write truth,
open your arms to criticism,
learn from it, create from it, and grow!

Speak truth, write truth,
never quell the speech you hate,
always welcome vigorous debate!

Speak truth, write truth,
thrive on logical argumentation
and supporting illustration
—tread always upon ad hominem!

Know what you gain from not heeding
these simple tenets—career, salary, friends,
invitations, publications, and grants—,
know also what you just might lose—
integrity, veracity, dignity, and self!

Speak truth, write truth,
question and challenge all dictums, ideologies,
and philosophies—and don’t ever forget
to question and challenge me!

Unemployed professor and founding editor of The American Dissident (www.theamericandissident.org).

Ken Radu

Saturday Night

Stretched in the night he wakens
to sounds of thunder in the city’s heart;
sleeping’s hard when rain beats the glass
and his mouth is dry,
parched for a lover’s kiss,
a lover whose lips parted
from his so long ago
her name is a distant drop.
Over absence and her phantom scent
he shifts to lick
a desert where love used to be.

Orchard Poem

It was the time of blossoms
on the branches and the sun falling
like rain until the fields shone bright
and moist with light and your face
was tender fruit between my hands.
Your eyes greener than apples,
your hair dark threads
of the earth and your dress
rippled like a pool of sky.
It was the time for gentle words
to fall so we fell together
under the boughs while flowers
caught by the wind broke loose,
covered my back, tangled your hair,
and the bees roared in the trees.

Kenneth Radu's poetry and fiction have appeared in Leaf Garden, fourpaperletters, Opium 2, Camroc Press Review, Black Lantern, Spilt Milk, and elsewhere. A collection of his verse Treading Water was published by Oberon Press. He lives in Quebec.

November 2009

2009-10-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

This month features Derek Richards, Felino Soriano, A.A. Veitch, David Kowalczyk and Sergio A. Ortiz

Derek Richards

deliverance

the doctor ignores my demands
for stronger painkillers
push, keep pushing
my wife grips my hand tighter
offers encouragement i don't even know why we're having this baby
we each share a dislike
for anything seven years and younger
i push again, harder
thinking that after this is all over
my wife and i need to talk

how to fail as a rock star
(originally published in MediaVirus)

attend yoga classes daily
shampoo your hair
purchase pre-ripped jeans
wash them
fall in love with a girl
who doesn't have issues
name your child when sober
drink vitamin water
smile for the camera
learn to dance
save your money
get old

i am the anti-christ

i am.
i've got the answers to all the worlds problems,
no one has asked me yet.
i speak well in public.
my fiance reminded me that i wore
a black winter hat
all through christmas dinner.
CHRISTtmas dinner.
black winter hat.
my favorite number is six.
so maybe i'll want to repeat it
a couple more times.
my last relationship ended with these words,
you are the fucking anti-christ.
my full initials are D.G.R. Devil-Guy-Rising...?
i've presented just some of the evidence,
you decide.
then respond to this poem
with flattery and offers of cash,
because i'll be seeing you around.

After performing for years, as both a musician and poet, in and around the Boston area, Derek Richards has recently decided to begin submitting his work for publication. So far he has been accepted for publication in Ghoti Magazine, Lung, MediaVirus, Word Riot, Right Hand Pointing, Tinfoildresses, The Legendary, Breadcrumb Scabs, Shootsand Vines, Cantaraville, Soundzine, The Centrifugal Eye, Strong Verse, Underground Voices, River Poets Journal, Halfway Down the Stairs, Dew on the Kudzu and Opium 2.0. His poetry aims to be direct and honest, brilliant and lucrative. He is currently residing in Gloucester, Mass., happily engaged and cleaning windows for a living.

Felino Soriano

Painters’ Exhalations 642
—after Brian Simmons’ Old Town

Old town wears
antiquated bones.
Eerily draws
segregating aspects of
hoary shadows. Home is
aspectual happenstance
allowing quiet corners
containing specialized memories

spiraled walls of choired hymns
wearing past
particular fortunes.

Neoteric communities
cannot claim existence
such as the pluralized patina forming
beautiful streaks of turquoise
stares into abbreviated newness.

Painters' Exhalations 643
--after William Phelps Montgomery's Slow Dance

Rain's dreary
choreographed slither
slides
the back room music heard on sight of
birds' majestic slapping flap-wing rhythm,
resting within residue’s origami
daytime folds.

Earth's 24 time 2/4 echo holds
hand of cloud's delicate
crafting pull, covering eye-sanity
fathom, future freely
seen in virtual expose,

naked the bodies move of tandem,
terrible recognition when torn
from designed rendition of
continuous together.

Painters’ Exhalations 644
—after Maria Mann’s Cold Comfort

Inside indigo’s largest
most
masculine sleeve (barrel-grand garment
housing articulate mansion-base
spiritual comfort;)
no index of flying X’s
round into focus haze finds fortunate on penultimate
guidelines (last, death).
A cold, distant cold
manmade bruise on heroine
cold
circulates among an air nearest dust’s most
accelerated

superstitious death.

Felino A. Soriano (b. 1974, California), is a case manager and
advocate for developmentally and physically disabled adults. He has
authored 16 collections of poetry, including “Altered Aesthetics”
(ungovernable press, 2009), and “Construed Implications”
(erbacce-press, 2009). His poems have appeared at Calliope Nerve, Full
of Crow, BlazeVOX, Metazen, Heavy Bear, and elsewhere. He edits &
publishes Counterexample Poetics, www.counterexamplepoetics.com, an
online journal of experimental artistry, and Differentia Press,
www.differentiapress.com, dedicated to publishing e-chapbooks of
experimental poetry. He is also a contributing editor for Sugar Mule,
www.sugarmule.com, and consulting editor for Post: A Journal of
Thought and Feeling, www.postjournalofthoughtandfeeling.com.
Philosophical studies collocated with his love of classic and
avant-garde jazz explains motivation for poetic occurrences. His
website explains further: www.felinoasoriano.info/

A. A. Veitch

Allegorical Women
(Previously published in bear creek haiku)

Because we wither
like whispers in the
wintertimes of our life span

Tragedy’s aftermath

Loss is the sound of
pulling a thousand
heavens down.

The insufferable feeling of it
still shatters my heart
into countless ghosts;
tongueless, crippled

with buttons for eyes &
wounds to lick
but
never
allow
to heal.

Catullus
(Previously published in freefall)

left behind his
yesterday,
in preparation. (No love poetry)

Mowing the lawn
jungle-like foliage
tempting traps
and trips.
Weeds nosy to our toes.

The blades and hands.
Our nails,
uncut and what we
later do with them,
to each other.
Crimes of humanity, the hilarity.

The extremists and their
missing reasoning;
nil respect for life,
civility, sanity;
no remorse for lack of chivalry.
Their passions removing all logic.

Lost weeds in a thick nameless patch.
Barely breathing, no
justified means in religion
exploited for greed, ignorance,
wrath unwarranted.

They’ll die, sad nobodies in
an airless tangle of ache.

As if their suicide bombs grant
them rights. Decisions they
raid as though it’s destiny for everybody.
Desperate, grasping,
refusing to acknowledge reality.

They’re too dense to know to want it.
There’s no love poetry in the desert of a barren heart.

A. A. Veitch has had poems published in mags such as: freefall, Black Book Press, Lilliput Review, Shemom, bear creek haiku, Nomad’s Choir & The Poet’s Art. She insists that she’s a "professional." She dabbles in art & opinion pieces. Ms. Veitch is a badly-practicing Christian, native Georgian without a Gone-with-the-Wind brogue; new pet parent to a tabby-mix cat & supporter of a bill preventing employers from discriminating against people with poor credit scores. She's shopping out her two chapbooks: 'Poethead' & 'Seasons of Flesh.'

David Kowalczyk

Praying Like Mencius

His prayers
vanish instantly. Leaving no clues
as to dreams or desires,
no traces of attachment,
no evidence of being.

Still Thy Leprous Tongues

And all the angels,
the winged wonders
wandering in the wind,
wonder:

"Where will you sleep?
What will still your hunger?"

I tell them:
"Hush. My bed is made
of dreams and prayers,
and my bread is made of faith."

"Something about you makes us
feel like Easter," the angels reply,
their hands no longer fists.

Words Like The Earth Slowly Leaning Forward

All memory
must
turn to sand.

Only then
will
the soul
arise.

Wild, detached, and,

more
or less:
triumphant.

David Kowalczyk lives and writes in Oakfield, New York. He has taught English in Changwon, South Korea, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, as well as at several American colleges, including Arizona State. His poetry has appeared in five anthologies and over seventy magazines, including St. Ann's Review, Maryland Review, and Rumble. He was founding editor of Gentle Strength Quarterly.

Sergio A. Ortiz

Voices Said

Last night I heard
a gathering of dead lilies
in the garden. Their petals covered
my mouth and I screamed: Wait!
I faded into a mist, magenta
dusk, the aroma of stables,
that last evening murmur,
and I cried.

Sandpiper

A sandpiper chases waves up
and down the shoreline.
He is a character from a romance novel
waiting for an author.

Memoirs

It takes depth
to write memoirs,
afternoons full of
questions,
before my voice floods
the cemetery
with music.

Ortiz has a B.A. in English literature from Inter-American University, and a M.A. in philosophy from World University. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in: Autumn Sky Poetry, 3LightsGallery, The Smoking Poet, The Acentos Review, Poesia, and Words-Myth.

October 2009

2009-09-30T07:49:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy of Dave Rubio, CA

This month features Stephen Jarrell Williams

MELT OF THE DERELICT

His morning harvest
walking down alleys...

Trash bin reeking,
warm pizza.

Cigarette butt,
smoking dessert.

Living in mind dreams,
day glaring blind.

Aching from so long ago,
he can't remember
home.

DECEIVING

Daylight plain on your face
Deceiving

I pretend not to notice
Keeping you
As close as I can

Night hiding phantoms
Wondering what you're thinking
Watching you flinch as you dream

Knowing the growing void
Unstoppable
Until you reach the no more of us

I'm dying
by the breath of when....

FOREST OF DREAMS

The high of youth
is never forgotten,
never attained again.

A drug of self
beauty
seemingly able
to live forever.

Only the old
can appreciate
its passing
like rain
through the fingertips.

The memories so close
like yesterday,
clear but out of reach.

And the wind blows
continually
over and through
the forest of dreams.

The forest of dreams
traveled by all.
A distant glow
pulling us on and on.
(Previously published in The Oak)

Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to write, listen to his music, and dance late into the night. He was born in Fort Belvoir, VA. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California. His poetry has appeared in Anthology, Avocet, Blue Collar Review, The Broome Review, Byline Magazine, Chronogram Magazine, Fissure Magazine, Freefall, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Hawaii Review, HUNGUR, Liquid Imagination, Nerve Cowboy, Mirror Dance, POEM, Poesia, Posey, Purpose, REAL, Tales from the Moonlit Path, Unfettered Verse, and many others.

September 2009

2009-08-31T11:04:00.000-07:00

This month features John Grey and Daniel Seifert

John Grey

NOTHING DOING

What has unearthly ever done for me?
The cow in the rain, its brown bulk
ghostly through gray, is still a cow,
head low as a comma, chewing wet grass,
sucking it down into its many stomachs.

The rickety sounds of night are no better.
Floorboards creak, windows rattle,
but no phantoms put in an appearance.
Sure, my nerves are on the lookout
for the merest signal from the ether

but, in the sorry end, the night is just
blankets and sheets, soft pillows and
soulless dreams. Even if the piano in
the parlor began playing on its own,
I wouldn’t go looking. Or if owls

hoot but there are no owls, it’s just another
bird, bored with its own song, imitating
the tuft-eared clowns of death.
Eerie is no friend of mine. I could
dance to the Mephisto waltz but

but it’d just be more of that maudlin
ballroom fare. I could walk in graveyards
after midnight but the dead could care less.
The woman in black is just unfashionable.
The child in the window is merely anal retentive.

Mysterious lights, strange figures, odd whispers,
I’ve known them all, mostly by their explanations.
I live in a material world. So many answers,
the questions have given up by this. Ghosts?
Not on my watch. The other world and I are worlds apart.

It’s raining and I see cows aplenty.
Is it my fault there really are no cows?

FISSURE

It’s earthquake, ground
full of doubts as to its own sermon;
in the cathedral of sound,
the world rumbling heresy,
cracks chain-sawing the faith.

This day, the floor is
so unsound, it tilts,
breaks up, and the ceiling
crumbles, pulls the walls
down with it.

Worse than any undertow.
Worse than the time he swam for his life.
Must get out, he says.
But the door finds him
before he ends the door.

And then it’s over.
Nothing but wreckage
and the sky’s derision.
A man slumps bleeding
through his broken sainthood
of a house.

The land’s all pits and crevices.
It’s earthquake of the spirit.
The bigger the God,
the deeper the abyss.

PASSION PLAYGROUND OF THE TEEN JET SET

I have to wonder why I don’t leave here,
what kind of refuge is this anyhow,
a flashlight’s glow,
a shadow in a rush,
a port of creaky doors, cracked windows,
much-thumbed copies
of the Da Vinci Code
and a drizzle-faded photograph
of Paris Hilton.
So this is the illuminated life...
at least for as long
as I hold that flashlight
under my unshaven chin
and beg the batteries
to never leave me.
I can hear the beach in the distance,
traffic outside,
and overhead a jet plane
bound for the Caribbean.
Only martyrs remain here
in this rooming house.
Here comes the heavy landlady
up the stairs
to stone me for last month’s rent.
I’ll bug her to fix the lights in here.
I’m sick of the dark, weary of the cure.

John Grey is an Australian born poet, playwright, musician, living in Rhode Island. He has been published in Cape Rock, Weber Studies, Writers Bloc and the Connecticut Review, and before on Unfettered Verse.

Daniel Seifert

Johnny Brenda’s, Fishtown

I had been staring out the same window at Johnny Brenda’s
for about two hours, waiting for
a friend to show up.

He walked in from the summer heat with a cigarette hanging
In between his lips and pockets full of change, from
breaking into vending machines.

He sat across from me in the booth and told me how much
he feared that he would be waiting tables
till he lost his teeth.

He asked about the Malvern but I cut him off
to ask about his mother, hoping
something had changed.

He put out his cigarette and stole a sip from my beer
then put it in front of him, opened his mouth
only to let out a sigh.

He told me that looking for change in your parents
is like looking for your reflection in
the water at the Jersey Shore.

Day

I listen to gnats sing around the street lights
as I walk to my ’92 station wagon to drive
half an hour, with the rain falling faster
and harder as I got closer, hearing my
breaks clinching closer together, sparks
being put out by the rain, and the clink
of the door as I open and shut it, running
inside to work on the last Monday of the month.

The morning of foaming lattes, pouring drinks
and steeping tea until I found myself on a break
under a green awning, reading Robert Lowell
then heading back in to bake croissants, count
down the hours and watch the shadows scale
slowly, yet steadily, across the linoleum floor
until I could throw off my apron and start up
my car only to sit in traffic, inch my way home.

It only being the afternoon I decided to find
a deli, eat a quick early dinner, sit and smoke
until the rain cleared and I could head to the
store in hopes of buying something new, some
thing warm and as I crept through the door
I heard the bell ring and the clerk looked up
from his paper to greet me with a glare and
no help in finding dinner and some milk.

My car sputtered up the drive way and parked
inches from the garage, the lock to the back
door switched over and my shoulder pushed
the door open, I threw my bag and keys on to
the table and hung my apron over the stool,
my back still hurting from the morning, my
bed empty and the TV on mute as I watched
Hamles throw a no-hitter on that soaked night.

Our Father's Ground Rule Doubles

With boiled hot dogs
wrapped in lightly
toasted white bread
we huddled around
the T.V. watching
Utley, Victorino and
Rollins roll through
Game 5 and breaking
Ben Franklin’s curse
on a warm night in
late October while
we drank stolen
beer from our fathers
and placed them
gently in a bucket
with ice, Miller ponies,
cans of Schlitz, a bottle
of Sam Adams
were our starting line
up and we took on
the voice of Harry,
called the game
play by play and
during commercials
guessed which beer
belonged to which
father but by the end
of the 9th inning
the labels were peeled
off and they no longer
served as jerseys
for our fathers.

Daniel Seifert recently graduated with a BA in English from DeSales University. He currently lives outside of Philadelphia where he works as a barista while reading and writing as much as possible. He plans to apply for an MFA in Creative Writing within the next year.

August 2009

2009-07-31T09:20:00.001-07:00

Photo courtesy of Dave Rubio, CA

This month features Kyle Moore and Michael Brownstein

Kyle Moore

Head Mice

A river of faked bile and scum flows
through a forced, gap-toothed smile.
Termite feces, vaguely brain-like
the product of ironic treasure hunts
urged on by demanded crayon scribbles,
spreading like fungus that covers all
until nothing recognizable remains.

Morning

I awake to the feel of moss on my tongue.
The stale stench of beer soaked carpet
reawakens regrets best left forgotten.
The faint moans of Sharpie-faced strangers
and those with time release virtues rise up
from their envy worthy masks of contentment
as the only greeting breath as I sneak out,
picking my way through a forgetful field,
an unseen specter, soon to be unmissed.

Defaced

She had seen enough already
When the bedpans hit the floor
The years softened her face

To papier-mâché easily torn
As she sought to make visible
The hidden, obvious demons

Tearing cheeks, used up skin
Packed under sterile fingernails
Her face now the face of humanity

After sedation she shut her eyes
Never to open them again
She had seen enough already.

Kyle Moore was born in Gaithersburg, Maryland and after graduating from high school worked various blue collar jobs until his love for reading and writing pushed him back towards college. He is currently majoring in English and living in CA.

Michael Brownstein

THE SOUND OF FEAR LATE IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

We talk about everything I don’t want to talk about, and that is enough.
Quiet sings from beyond windowed walls
and earth does expose men gone to pieces.
It’s just that machine-guns really are that loud
and there really is intrinsic value to pain.
My daughter asks if blood washes vegetation,
if words can come from soil when it rains.
I’m afraid I do not know if I will ever understand the answer.

SNOW

The light touch of snow bends the leaf,
The brown grass of late winter feeling the weight,
And there are tracks, too, small imprints—
Vole and field mouse, raccoon and possum.
The forest has powers to transform itself to another place
And still the snow falls into the early afternoon,
The trees letting everything slip through their fingers,
Everything seasoned, everything ready to accept what has to come.
A fawn looks up from the brush.. It tastes the snow.
It predicted its falling. It holds to stillness like a wall.
And the perfect leaf embraces the perfect snow,
Until at last it must let go, snow and wind.

A SHIFT IN THE FIELD

I have thought about this long and hard
and have decided I would rather die without you around me.
My father died alone in a basement bedroom
in a house where people loved him.
My mother's second husband died surrounded by all of us—
peacemakers and enemies, silent and cordial.
My mother refuses to die.
I grant her thirty more years of living, healthy with grace.
My brother who fights death with guns and stretches,
I grant a second century.
His wife so small and handsome
I grant the same and twenty years more.

Brownstein taught elementary school in Chicago’s inner city (he is now retired), but he continues to study authentic African instruments with his students, conducts grant-writing workshops for educators and the State of Illinois Title 1 Convention, and records performance and music pieces with grants from the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs, the Oppenheimer Foundation, BP Leadership Grants, and others.

July 2009

2009-06-30T05:44:00.000-07:00

This month features Karen Kelsay

In My Daughter's Town

An October sky props a yellowing sycamore
beneath its chin and thinks about snow.
Here, in my daughter’s town, Pollyanna

and Tom Sawyer still climb trees and gather
apples for mom’s pie. Women hand stitch
quilts and give them to the needy.
Basements are lined with shelves, stacked
with preserves and canned food. Little boys

join Boy Scouts and earn an eagle badge.
Today, two teenage girls wheeled up
with a wagon full of pumpkins:
Would you like one? Our garden
produced too many this year.

On Sunday, front doors open and close,
almost in unison, as neighbors walk
to church--the way their parents

and grandparents always have. Through good
or bad times, everyone lives in each other’s pockets
like an extended family.

Each year I visit here a few times, blowing
Pacific breezes to the back of my mind.
I forget that I live in a metropolis, not knowing
my neighbor’s names.

In my daughter’s town, I walk among remnants
of summer flowers and view undeveloped hills,
finding new appreciation for magnificent trees
that have stood strong for generations--
and wonder if this Californian palm
could ever survive a transplant.

Beyond the Gate

Children are not allowed to enter this room.
Here, white walls rise like water lilies
from hibiscus-red carpet, and crystal grapes

become small prisms that capture and emit
an array of four o’clock suns onto the coffee table.
A ruby-caped matador peers down at the sofa,

while The Girl From Ipanema waits
to be played on the stereo. A Spanish woman,
cross nestled in her cleavage, reflects dark eyes

in the long mirror. Herb Alpert, Julie Andrews,
and Robert Goulet records are stacked
inside the carved cabinet. A massive wrought iron

gate at the doorway keeps little fingers and feet
off white upholstery, where the slinky cat
lies on the best chair.

Karen Kelsay is a native Californian who grew up near the Pacific and loves writing about the sea and nature. Her poems have been published in many magazines over the past few years. She is the author of Collected Poems and Fist of Roots, by Puddinghouse Press.

www.karenkelsay.com/

June 2009

2009-05-29T07:20:00.000-07:00

This month features Erik Knutsen and Felino Soriano

Erik Knutsen

Everything I Know is Passing Me By

Everything I know is passing me by
I want it all to stay still for a while
Days and days lost to my mind
Am I only a memory of better times?
I want some sort of history
To take the weight of my Self from me

Everything I know is passing me by
Am I even aware this is my only life?
As an insect’s fractural view
I know not on what to focus anew
Every facet is just the same
Pointing to the center of the hollow stage

Everything I know is passing me by
While I sit grasping at ephemeral time
But it flits away before I know
Who I am or where to go
Without any comparison to make
No decision is worth being awake

Hiding

I heard of your Father who sees in secret,
While I lay hiding in a basement

Who sees the beatings in hidden chambers?
Who sees the frantics of a lustful manger?
Who sees the lies spoken from honest eyes?

I saw everyday what it truly means
To keep a secret and hide truth away

Who sees the forcing of naked skin breaking?
Who sees the malice tightened round necks failing?
Who sees the glory promised delivered poorly?

I spoke not, for fear, that I should be found,
The hidden secret’s silent shroud

Hope

And, for a time, there was hope
How like to angry Micheal with sword aflame
Did we rage when it was lost.
We gave him more, a burden,
And found he was a man.

Erik Knutsen dreams of being a magpie. His attraction to shiny things would be more acceptable. He lives in Vancouver, BC, but loves in Portland, OR. He has been published in Static Movement, and will soon be published in Tinfoil Dresses and Everyday Poets.

Felino Soriano

Painters’ Exhalations 233
—after Tomas Watson’s Unmade Bed

Her skin, a pale bark, a white willow’s
smoothest section texture
gone into a sectioned hallway
without the eyes of windows
opening to reveal an outside
story, written on the childrens’
spinning bodies and frayed,
translucent jump rope. An
image paused, paused because
the angle will not leave the memory’s
hands and their holding onto security,
a bouquet never wilting and
spelling dust as dissipation
changes name and functional,
earthly role. She will not move
from this comfort, comfort of aged
sheets showing wrinkled torso,
limbs, —face of peace, thus wrinkles
have avoided this layer of recognition.
Hers is a shadow of crawling seas,
avoiding cliché crash against muscular,
dense and blackened rocks. Hers is a shadow
causing parallel distinction, one of resting
where the bedroom’s hand holds
out firmly, a nestling adaptation
of the constant nightly visits, leaving
only when mood and morning spark
a fire into desiring difference in visual
space, an outside destination where the wind
covers softly, a soft that never leaves the skin at
its most restful disposition.

Painters’ Exhalations 234
—after Robert Gil De Montes’ Untitled 1

He has wandered. A wander
near reflectional wanders, reflection
nothing like the face standing stilted
above a pond’s surrealist hand. He
is afraid of the monster near the curtain
of luxury, pulled to reveal a body
unlike the body mother named
years before. He has changed. A skin
type change after the cursive hand of tattoo
has erased the cloudless sky
into rain burgeoning head of multi
-headed giant. Away from the chair
once skin to skin with his. The chair
like a lover never leaving though
infidelity shadows primal yens,
esoteric copacetic endeavors. He
is himself but changed, a change
of reciprocity, for change in the physical
attacks the psyche standing still, startling
into a running toward a distant
acclimation.

Painters’ Exhalations 239
—after Hiro Yokose’s Untilted (#4001)

Bowl of naturalism, crafted
by an otherness of weaved
sensitivity. Light has formed
here, brim-high beauty to be a woman
well-dressed, decorating a mirror’s
standing still. Clouds lie
slanted on tree’s, a fedora’s curved
contour, gray and leaning into obligatory
light.

Felino Soriano (California) is a case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. He is the editor of the online journal, Counterexample Poetics, www.counterexamplepoetics.com, which focuses on International interpretations of experimental, philosophical, esoteric, post-postmodern, and avant-garde poetry, art, and photography. He is the author of five chapbooks and e-books, including Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008) Feeling Through Mirages (Shadow Archer Press, 2008) and Calling Toward Clarity (Chippens Press, 2009), and also has a mini-chapbook forthcoming from Wheelhouse Magazine. The internal collocation of philosophical studies with classic and avant-garde jazz explains his poetic stimulation. Website: www.felinosoriano.com

May 2009

2009-04-30T08:36:00.001-07:00

Photo courtesy of Dave Rubio, California

This month features John Grey, Dave Rubio and Ashutosh Ghildiyal

John Grey

TERRY, SALESMAN

He sold and he drove,
into the sun and then into the shadow.
The radio phased in and out.

Around 8 P.M., he ate at a truck stop.
At 10 PM, he stopped at a motel.
The bed was comfortable enough
but he couldn’t sleep.
His body felt like it was selling, moving, eating.

He carried two suitcases.
One was a change of shirt and underwear,
the other was loaded up with rug shampoo.
His territory was as wide as three states
but, on nights like this,
it felt as shrunken as a stain on a carpet.

Tomorrow, a new town.
He’d knock on doors, turn on the charm.
He’d do okay.
But growing rich wasn’t part of the bargain.

The couple in the next room
were arguing loudly.
At least, he didn’t have another’s
dramas to worry about.
But from the other wall
came the sound of frenzied lovemaking.
His restlessness was a lesson in coupling...
the good and the bad.

By morning, he’d be on the road.
The ones who craved his loneliness
and those that felt only pity for it
would still be in bed.

Road, radio, eat, bed, town, house, charm...
each was just a way out of the last.

A JUNK-YARD SHOULD HAVE A DOG IN IT

What’s with my pants leg, the flesh above my ankle,
they’re as whole as the moment I entered through that rusty gate.
And hairs on the back of my neck, even though I have none,
sit comfortably as the mane of a feeding stallion.

I rummage through junk cars, hold hub caps up to the light,
admire headlamps from a 67 Buick like they’re lidded ewers
in an antique store, press fingers deep into ancient leather seats,
and not a snarl, a snap, a jaw full of foaming spit.

And why do I walk so slowly in this cold metal graveyard,
when Fm here to steal corpse parts, uproot steel from its grave.
I should be running, screaming, dodging between hulks,
scrambling over wire fences, bleeding and terrified.

I move too freely through this world, am captivated
by my own good fortune, the lack of threat.
A crumpled up Caddy provides the perfect hood ornament.
Maybe this was the car that swerved to miss a dog.

IN THE PARK BETWEEN THE TENEMENTS

I'm sitting on a cinderblock,
among grass and weeds,
some of which are poison.
Bugs buzz about my face.
Toxins fog the air as well.

Tenement shadow
falls across my body.
The tenement itself
is shadow of when it was new,
pulsing with immigrants.

A dog runs wild,
with teeth enough to bite.
A seedy looking man
is staring at me.
Is he the one the cops are looking for?

I feel like I'm in some
kind of fish tank
at the Down and Out pet store.
See me behind burnished glass.
But who would buy?

Don't people just gloat
at the tiny flicks of floating orange
and their pretend castles?
No shelter, no redemption,
just blocked drainage, dumpster overflow.

Some kids kick a soccer ball around.
There seem to be no goal posts.
They're citizens of the game and little else.
They're in the bowl too
with no way of facing outward.

Plants, bugs, dog, man and kids,
we all keep to our bits of distance.
We all think we've just enough sense
to be where we are.
Sit long enough, you feel yourself transpiring.

Suddenly, the soccer ball slams the wall behind me
to a great cheer.
So where they live is the goal after all.
A gray cloud rolls over the sun.
The world feels like a ditch.

John Grey lives in Rhode Island. He has been published in Agni, Worcester Review, South Carolina Review and The Pedestal, just to name a few.

Dave Rubio

Tomorrows Away

And today the fear of having to encounter the fears of my fellow man
Have decided to shine upon me

And when one is not afraid one wonders how one can
Have the strength to continue to shine
And smile
Upon one's self
To transfer that smile unto
YOU

And today the fear of having to encounter the fears within me
Have decided to shine upon thee

And when one sees the fears that someone else is afraid of, how can one not stop to wonder

“Do those fears exist in me?”

So we say…
“Being bold is just too gosh darn cold.
Can't fear just hold me in my place and cradle me in its brittle bosom?”

And so our fear (which we hold so dear)
Takes our boldness away

And we just save it all because as we know…
Tomorrow is just ‘another so-called-average-ordinary day’

Another day for us to feel we did something that amounted to nothing
A day in which you will hear at least one thing

About someone else doing something

To make you wonder
“If that fear didn’t exist in me…
I could have been that somebody today.”

When will we let
today's and yesterday's fears stop taking…

our tomorrows away?

When will we let go of
today's and yesterday's fears
so that we can let tomorrow

be

our

way?

Dave Rubio is a friend, a poet and a photographer living in California.

Ashutosh Ghildiyal

A MENTAL PICTURE

Suspended in the air,
A ring of smoke..
Stuck in the ear,
A resonating note.
A glass of wine,
Half filled.
A captivating smile,
A twinkle in the eye,
A single soft heartbeat,
And a lingering touch...
A mental picture taken
Of an ageless moment.

TO A FRIEND

Remember the days
When we first crossed our ways
While crossing a street
In an alien neighborhood

Remember the days
When we sat and drank at the cafes
Under the moonlit sky
In the damp, cold weather

Remember the days
When we went through that phase
Induced by a silly argument
Of not talking to each other

Remember the days
When everyone else was blasé
I stood in tears amid the alien crowd
And you came forward and no one other

It's been many ages since we last met
You stayed, and I traveled further
But I’ll come soon and shall not forget
To shake your dear hand, my brother

THOSE HILLS

Those hills, so close, yet so distant
Looking at them, you forget yourself
For one timeless instant
Overwhelmed by their overwhelming beauty

Standing there, you grow aware
Of the age of this earth
And of your own impermanence

They will remain, and you, with your
Sorrows, pains, and worries, will pass away
They will be there, as they have been
Since long before you came

A GARLAND OF VERSE

Let me make a garland of verse for you
For words are all I have to give

Long have been your days and nights
Lengthy your weary trials

Let me create word music for you
And elevate you to soaring realms

Where the milky white clouds floating
Upon the lustrous night's canvas

Shall give testimonies of your poetic grace
And words will join together in applause

Let us open a bottle of our mutual wine
And sit by the door to our love street

On a dreamy morning reminding you of me
While the music of the spheres plays along

And while the music plays, let me also sing
With an eraser voice smoothly dissolving

The frozen tears on your time- weary face
Sanctifying the distance of empty spaces

Then let me strike the chords of harmony
And breathe poetic melodies in your jaded ears

And take you to a mind flight on the wordship
Bound towards the port of our purple sanctuary

POETIC DREAMS

Poetic dreams my newfound friend
Seeks to instill in my
Unimaginative psyche

And as I contemplate
This untried venture
While searching for synonyms
In the thesaurus of my mind

She tells me
I was born to dream
That is why I don't take my head
Off at night and put it in a refrigerator

Very well
I shall attempt to unfreeze
Hidden dreams she claims
I should sample at least

But my mind doesn't move
No visions appear to me
No unheard melodies penetrate
No words form themselves

Leaving me dreaming
Of untried poetic dreams

And a stocked fridge

Ashutosh writes poetry, short fiction and essays. He was born in Lucknow in 1984, where he completed his schooling. He completed his graduate studies in New Delhi and his post-graduate education in Mumbai. He is also a salaried professional and is currently based in Mumbai. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in various print and online literary magazines.

April 2009

2009-03-30T10:26:00.000-07:00

Distant Rays by Randy Thurman

Randy Thurman is an artist,composer & writer
living and working in Spring City,Tennessee.

www.thurmanart.org

This month features the poetry of Duane Locke.

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
(After George Gordon, Lord Byron)

Sometimes, her spontaneousness
Seems fastened to an autopsy.
Her gestures were articles,
Conjunctions, prepositions,
Function words with nothing
Before or after. It was as if
Her life was “an,” “and,” and
“of.” She was like a koan
Without a content. The nearest
Thing to traditional, ordinary
Clarity was a dangling modifier.

She walked as if squeezing
Space. Never the direct,
Only insinuations, insinuations
Bumping on crutches,
A hobble without a
Pink-fringed rose garter
On the lifted leg
Of a can can dancer.
When it was thought
Evidence was glimpsed
It became spectral.

Her face, you know,
I don’t know it.
Sometimes it looks
Like thunder, not
The thunder of a Zeus,
But the thunder of Inanna.
The fire-red power
Of spread-out arms,
The lapis lazuli sparkle
Of an overthrowing eye,
The carnelian glint
Of a bare shoulder.

Other times a burrow,
An opening to a darkness
With the vague view
Of turning wheels,
Or talking beds,
Or tendrils curled
Around a tear,
Pink doors disrobed
To become mirrors
Marshland, madhouses.

Once, snapdragons

It is her covertnesss that I must
Leave concealed,
And protect the concealment.
I will not falsify
By applying as understanding
Existing notions of interpretations.

EPITHALAMIUM
(After Edmund Spenser)

She felt as she said “I do,”
Something amiss,
A lack, this legality
Was not preceded by
A love that had
An oxymoronic twist.

The whole tiered
Sugar and flour,
Topped by dolls,
Was structured
By carnival barkers
Turned entrepreneurs
At shopping malls.

It was pavement,
Not a coral reef.
Our courtship
Was based on
Two documents
We never read:
"The Declaration
Of Independence"
And "The Constitution".
Thus hearsay snapped
The synapses in our
Neural anatomies.

There was the influence
Of calendar art on his part
That lead to future
Christian Science reading rooms,
It was my baptism
That lead to the loss
Of definite articles,
A life without “the’s, an’s.”

Our love was rayon,
Nostalgic for mulberry trees
And silk worms.

PHILOSOPHICAL NON-HESITATIONS;
PRAYING MANTIS

I sit, enjoying the self-ownness
Of a private experience:
A memory of movements,
Jerky, sedate:
A praying mantis’
Motion on a vine of blooms
With pale green centers
And bright green leaves
As thin as strings,
Remembering fireworks,
Rocket spread flares,
Colored pale green.

I am at an al fresco boulevard simulated
Italian ristorante drinking Chianti,

I sit by a black iron rail curled to abstractly
Represent a black iron bee hovering
Over black iron flower petals.
A designer followed the fashion
Of following nature, but failed,
Produced trite geometry.

I felt another joy, the joy of feeling that I know
I cannot be
Interpreted as having the differentiated character
Of some definite way of existing.
I am undifferentiated.

I sip Chianti, Antonori Riserva, remember
Another privileged moment:
A walking stick, the insect
Gazing at me from oak bark,
Pale green eyes
In a darker green face.

Duane Locke lives by an ancient oak, an underground stream, and as an osprey’s home in rural Lakeland, Florida. Future: A 400 page book of his poems, YANG CHU’s POEMS, to be published in April, 2009 by the Canadian publisher, Crossing Chaos. Present: Featured poet and Interviewed (23pp.) in “Eviscerator Heaven, #4” Past: 6,198 poems published in print magazines and e zines. The entire issue, Vol. 10, No, 1 of “The Bitter Oleander” contains his poems And 92pp. Interview.

March 2009

2009-03-01T04:27:00.000-08:00

This month features
Stephen Jarrell Williams and Felino Soriano

Stephen Jarrell Williams

MOVING ON

I'm part of the rock shore, barnacles rooted into
my cheeks like calcium flowers, wave fed,
wet salt splashes waking me up with a slap.
I'm squinting under the sun assault
warming what's left of my skin, stones cutting
to the bones, sometimes so cold aching
like a cracked tooth washed by the rushing tide.

I pucker my lips for you walking the beach
past me. You were my wife some years ago...

(Deep inside a throated cry that can't get out.)

I greedily watch you from the corner of my eye
disappearing into another's sight.
He has a granite chin...

Beyond the waves the whales cross between here
and Catalina Island, gray spines rising full of meat
and blood, living complete with instinct harmony,
lung rhythms, group packed in their journey
moving on...

Everyone does...

I hunker down in the sand, fortifying myself,
measuring my place in the wall, growing
accustomed to the wave's kissing sting.

RAIN

Don't let us die before we've tasted the rain
tickling down our faces,
holding each other
in wet clothes,
distant thunder giving us a spasm
sunset orange under ships of dark clouds,
summer heat simmering day into night,

unbuttoning your top button...

All the land
a rush of water.

CITY STUCK

His backyard city
has become a wilderness

just a shot away
gangs stitch streets

white flags hang in smoke
birds fly in squadrons

sunrays cook the slow
stew of millions

his scars
cutting connections

new world
madness

cops finding him
spread-eagle on the roof

trying to fly from
one high point to another

wandering
in the stir of old songs

hoping to find himself
in a new picture

watering red roses
fields of red roses.

Stephen Jarrell Williams has done everything from mowing lawns to being an executive at a software company. His poetry and short stories have appeared in over a hundred publications. He loves to write, listen to his music, and dance late into the night.
His poetry has recently appeared in Avocet, Nerve Cowboy, Sacred Journey, and others.
He has poems accepted and soon to be published in Aoife's Kiss, The Broome Review, REAL, Tales From The Moonlit Path, and others. He lives in California.

Felino Soriano

Appearances

Rain formed a dialogue of sign
language. Slant, tap, splash,
meant as life dying beneath
a surface reality. A black cat
crawled towards the aroma
of dampened concrete. The dichotomy
of life and death apparent
to the wind whose howl
mimicked a mother's cry,
distant from a child
unable to caress maternal
embraces.

Memory
: Now only steps away.

The voice of time claws the back of the throat.

Focus, the woman you breathe into will vanish,
her arms (decorated in feathered spasms) contemplating
the burial manifestation,
you will swallow yourself
whole, in her absence.

The history of answers, etched in skeletons, the obvious; delusion knows where.

Of the memory writing its own poem: the lake where the sipping reside, an arid bone
breeze erases prosody, music, death the message manifesto.

Meaning occurs when its body rises from slumbering, deep where eyes
fracture the fragile.

Childhood.

Walking a trembling gate, tightrope thickness causational fall, left: live, right:
abundance of family tossing doves mimicking descent into zippered earth.

Rise, then; the body knew its reconstruction, flawless. The self-portrait of
emotion tangent aligns with the walking toward past deconstructions.

Into the Coming

Night
shakes her ebony, elongated
strands of locks
releasing caricatures of
dance-slanting
rain, bending upon impact
across
sunken soils. Her eyes
too blend as mirages
of camouflaged day
attempting to circumvent
within its twelve hours
of planted burgeon.

She wears bracelets of territory
and gardens in her name
the comatose and teeming
spread into flight as wind
talks melodies into breeze
approaching all within the
open.

Surfaced, the standing where vowels meet eye to eye
forming the language of crime and
the moon's only chance
at surviving visions. Spelled
in reverberations,
a crying
butterfly must land where silence atop its spotted
wings begins to whisper an ending of all movement:

dawn.

Felino Soriano (California) is a case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. He is the editor of the online experimental poetry journal Counterexample Poetics (http://counterexamplepoetics.blogspot.com/). He is the author of three chapbooks Exhibits Require Understanding Open Eyes (Trainwreck Press, 2008), Feeling Through Mirages (Shadow Archer Press, 2008), Abstract Appearance Reaching Toward the Absolute (Trainwreck Press, 2009) and an e-book Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008). The juxtaposition of his philosophical studies with his love of classic and avant-garde jazz explains his poetic motivation. Website: www.felinosoriano.com

February 2009

2009-01-31T07:29:00.000-08:00

This month features Channie Greenberg
and Mike Estabrook

Channie Greenberg

The Boss’ Orchestrated Metamorphoses

The Boss’s orchestrated metamorphoses,
Ongoing creation,
Zapped everything into place,
Over days.
Period.

Set into motion,
Various catalysts,
Resulting in His Desires,
Effecting broad to specific.
Simultaneously,
Instantaneously,
And, concurrently, nonimmediately,

Aboriginal scars traveled internationally,
Under-recognized in regions remanded for romance
Or,
For unmanageable fear.

Sages know water vanquishes fire,
Flame blasts earth,
Dirt distorts windy columns,
Gusts displace oceans of truth-birthed passages.
Paper. Scissors. Stone.
Our personal development grows in this way, too.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Watching a Painter

Smooth, short, strokes
Touch clay canvas,
Placing breathing tapestries
Along a tripod form.

My different world’s morning
Smells like cat pee.

Children talk new things,
Older words and laughter,
Bizarre jokes. Their faces
Form strange blooms.

When mental archives yield
Contemporary volumes,
Then page wombs
Birth cerebral monsters.

Foremost libraries weary
Whereas necessity rejects books
Chaff blows over the critical landscape.

When the matador cried for culture,
He meant to paint
Not Sousaphone marches,
Or British verse,
But bona fide flesh.

KJ Hannah (Channie) Greenberg has been published in many journals including The Jerusalem Post, Calligraphy, Hamodia, The Externalist, Doorknobs and Bodypaint, Type-A Moms, Fallopian Falafel Zine, The Clarity of the Night, Joyful! and Tuesday Shorts, Poetica Magazine, Bewildering Stories, The Blue Jew Yorker, AntipodeanSF, and The Mother Magazine.
_______________________________________

Mike Estabrook

Trying on Dresses

My wife is trying on dresses
for the dinner-dance we are attending
on Saturday. The black one with
the shiny circle pattern,
good for the cha-cha-cha;
the long sexy skirt perfect
for wide swooping turns in the tango;
the pleated black and white number
that flows exquisitely in the samba;
Robin’s low-cut thin-strap skirt
that makes me want to wrestle her
to the floor right here and now.
And I’m watching her, being careful
not to ogle her, but damn if she
doesn’t look absolutely incredible.
After all these years
I am still overwhelmed by this woman,
she is still the most beautiful woman
I have ever known.

She taps her chest

I go to her, take her gently
in my arms and kiss her hard
yet tenderly.
She allows the kiss
then goes back
to trying on this top
and that top,
this shoe and that shoe.

Even though she is tired
of hearing me say it,
constant as the tides,
sure as the moon,
I cannot help myself.
“You are so beautiful Patti.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” she smiles at me.

“The one thing I do know
after all these years together
is that you think I’m beautiful.
I know it in here.” She taps her chest.
“And I need to buy
a new pair of shoes,” she adds
as she sashays out of the room.

Mike Estabrook lives in Acton, MA. His latest project – The Patti Poems, poems (and some prose) are about his wife. This project will be his magnum opus, what he plans to spend the rest of his life on. It is all he cares about, all that is important to him. It has become a bit of an obsession, so far becoming a collection of 21 books.

January 2009

2008-12-31T06:39:00.000-08:00

Photo courtesy of Dave Rubio, CA

Happy New Year!

This month features Sandra Kegebein and Michael Estabrook

Sandra Kegebein

It's Like...

I am amazed
at the way you make me laugh
at the silliest things
when all I want to do is scream

you reach down
inside the deepest part of me
(that buried part of me)
and pull out all my dreams

and show them to me
as if I'd never seen them before
(or at least, not for a while)
and I smile

as you catch my tears
like they were falling stars
and put them in a locket
(that you keep in your pocket)

and say they'll make you
feel less lonely
on nights that you miss me-
It's like you kiss me

as the words from your tongue
tenderly intrude
slowly, madly, deeply,
into my heart so sweetly.

- - - - -

Tainted Sky

Capturing the flame
that simmers
beneath my heated breast,
the angry sun ignites the sky
with erratic oranges and reds-

A catastrophic craze
of wrongs exchanged,
splatters above my head
in bold flashes-

A choleric outburst of words
scatter their last remains
along the ill-born plains
of strange unrest.

In shivering protest,
my fainted heart allows
that all of love that's left,
are bitter-tainted clouds
and cold ashes.

- - - - -

Picasso Fiasco

Be it surreal or actual fact,
I cannot let go,
or even bring back
the sweet savor, that once flavored
the little things

like promised rings of time
spent loving and needing.

On times feet- fleeting,
we watch love die
as it lies bleeding, forever misleading
two hearts into thinking
their love is awry.

Are we sinking
too far to be saved?

I still crave that smile you gave me
when we bravely
stepped into the abyss
of that unforeseeable kiss.

What brought us to this place
of two abstract hearts
ill-behaved?

I rarely see love's face,
though sometimes
a taste of its sweetness seeps through
...when I look at you.

What cubistic craziness is this?
What have we missed?
Has our love miscarried?
Touch me now and remind me
of the woman you married.
_ _ _ _ _

This Too-Heavy Blanket Of Cold

It's this too-heavy blanket of cold
covering the gold
that bound us together once,
that has an inward hold on me now-
like frost-bite to the heart.

As you depart for work each day
I sit at the window
and wipe the frost away
from my mind.

Is it time that binds all seasons
into one?
When it comes down to it,
aren't they all winters, in disguise?

Like the spring-crocus
breaking through winter's ice-
will our love suffice
to bloom again, somehow

Or lose its will and succumb to
this too-heavy blanket of cold
that has a hold on us now?

Sandra resides in southern Georgia with her husband and an adopted cat named Fancy. She considers herself an amateur poet who is enjoying the journey of discovery on her way to becoming a better writer. More of her poems can be seen at- http://www.geocities.com/an_intricate1/poetry.html

Michael Estabrook

Freedom

Asking you to go steady
with me on our very first date
in high school
was the best thing
I ever did in my whole life.
You said yes,
because you liked me enough
and felt it was the proper thing to do.
Then two weeks later
you changed your mind,
gave me my stupid ring back,
telling me I was going too fast for you,
telling me you needed your freedom.
But it turned out to be
the very best thing I ever did because –
over the next year and a half
you didn’t date anyone else but me.
We became boyfriend and girlfriend,
dating each other exclusively
and that was that – until college
when your need for freedom
reared its ugly head yet again.

The worst day ever in my life

Winter, the end of
our first semester away at college,
I decide to surprise my girlfriend,
take the train like usual,
meet her in her dorm lobby.
We sit and talk, but she’s nervous,
not looking at me,
one pretty leg folded under the other.
A beautiful girl, so collegiate, so confident,
fresh as the new winter snow outside.
“I’m so sorry, Mike” she says,
“But I can’t see you today.”

I’m stunned, didn’t see this one coming.
We had been together
since high school, two years now,
and were serious, at least I thought
we were serious. “I have a date
today with another guy.”

My heart sinks to the bottom of the sea.

“I need my freedom
to date other guys to be certain
you are the right one for me.”
I’m dumbfounded, shattered, I shrug.
What could I do? It is useless to protest.
But before leaving the campus
I slink over to the cafeteria,
spy from an upper window
as she and her new boyfriend
come in for lunch, she all giggling
and playful, throwing little snowballs
at her new beau, her lustrous
brown hair catching the sun.

What if I didn’t leave after you sent me away?

But what if I never left you that day
when you sent me away?
What if I simply shrugged and said,
“Well, OK, Patti, I hope you have a nice time
on your date with your new boyfriend.
But I’m going to sit and stay
right here in this chair in your dorm lobby.
It’s a free country isn’t it?”

I suspect you would have become flustered
and upset, asking me again to leave,
perhaps even pleading for me to leave
to not embarrass you in front of your friends.

But no, I would be a real man this time
and I wouldn’t go. Instead, I’d stay right there
minding my own business in this dorm lobby chair
and watch as Bobbie introduced you
to your blind date, watch as he shook
your sweet, soft hand and maybe leaned in
for a quick hug and kiss on the cheek.

I’d watch as you tried to ignore me, tried not
to look across the room and see
the devastated look on my face.

And then I’d watch too as you followed
your new date through the door, followed along
behind him outside, out, free, to your freedom
from me, to enjoy your blind date all day,
some lunch in the campus cafeteria,
asking clumsy questions trying to get
to know one another as fast as possible
so you could enjoy your precious time together
at the game and then in the back seat
of Bobbie’s boyfriend’s big old car.
What if . . .

Mike Estabrook lives in Acton, MA. His latest project – The Patti Poems, poems (and some prose) are about his wife. This project will be his magnum opus, what he plans to spend the rest of his life on. It is all he cares about, all that is important to him. It has become a bit of an obsession, so far becoming a collection of 21 books.

December 2008

2008-11-30T05:47:00.000-08:00

This month features Isaiah Vianese and Channie Greenberg

Isaiah Vianese

A SONNET TO CONFESSIONALISM
for MaryJo Mahoney

Our first evening frost has come to pin
us to this goddamn house, this rusty hinge
you call our 'domicile'. Sexton's been locked
in an upstairs room all month, cracking
her thin ribs under some man's hard-edged wheel,
white Plath tinkers with a corpse's bones in
the basement. She's always speaking German
and giving me some improper salute.

We've been too long in this ice-cap of a
town, Robin. Too long wishing we could mouth
some other emotion. You say I speak
too much of skunk hours, dancing Mr. Bones,
but I say we must get out of here, this
headless horse of a home. Robin, trust me.

LEAVING

I've been driving three days over hills,
and the trees don't like me much,
holding their hands up to god.
They're evangelical. There's constant praying.

I'm thinking about the moment I left,
your hair wrapped in a messy red bun,
and I'm thinking we're done, Robin.
I'm thinking about those days with the IV
and I lying like a cadaver, palms down,
the stupid tulips burning their hot yellow,
and you not there, they pinned me.

I imagined them wrapping my body
in the death blankets, draining the fluids
into a plastic basin, packing up my silver watch,
my wallet with its picture of you
flaunting a neater do, the jeans with the broken knee.

I'm frayed, and I'm searching. Leaving. Left.

Isaiah's poems are forthcoming in The Fourth River and 63 Channels. He lives and writes in Missouri.

KJ Hannah (Channie) Greenberg

Watching Raindrops Dance

We discover self-reliance,
Between pieces of white bread,
To Divine incorporation.

School mornings, though,
Life's jobs completed on autopilot,
I often have to guess 'hello'.

The kids' return to 'finding'
Themselves frequently elicits
My new moments,
Plus all the power of sleepy gray cats.

Cityscape perspectives yield
More than sparrow goings-on.
Sometimes I can grasp able-bodied knowledge.

Christina Rosetti's 'Birthday' to a Satirical Beat

My heart is like a singing bird,
Whose nest is in a desert bare.
My heart is like an apple tree,
Whose limbs are plucked and over sheared.
My heart is like a snail's shell,
That rots beneath a brackish sea.
My heart is sadder than all these,
Because my love has come to me.

Raise me a platform of cotton rags,
Hang it with wolf skin and crocodiles.
Carve it in stone and lizards' toes,
Amid serpents and beetle eyes.
Work it in darkness and brittle twigs,
Work in gray mornings and blackened skies,
Because the low point of my life,
Has come, my love has come to me!

Channie Greenberg has been published in many journals including The Jerusalem Post, Calligraphy, Hamodia, The Externalist, Doorknobs and Bodypaint, Type-A Moms, Fallopian Falafel Zine, The Clarity of the Night, Joyful! and Tuesday Shorts, Poetica Magazine, Bewildering Stories, The Blue Jew Yorker, AntipodeanSF, and The Mother Magazine.

November 2008

2008-11-01T05:18:00.000-07:00

This month features John Grey and Isaiah Vianese

John Grey

THE FIRST

Sky, the color of gun-barrels,
cracks at the edge of the morning.
Winter's shaken out of stupor,
stiffly broods as voles and mice
skitter out of their dens,
across fields of melting snow,
leave provocative spoors
for wind and cold to bluster over.
A hungry owl hoots at the sudden entrance
of his prey on the dull white stage.
Overhead, clouds break even more apart.
The smallest of creatures have decided
the weather must change.
Feast for the raptor is preferable
to days dark as night in the clinging chill.
The world turns on paw-prints in snow,
narrow gauge tracks trembling with light.

A HAZING

So much haze,
can barely see the buildings.
Houses succumb like remote villages
to rebel armies.
Dawn is out there somewhere,
morning right behind.
But who has the wherewithal
to raze this fog
and let time go about its business.
Birds try
but a trill here, a chirp there,
won't budge it.
Nor the lonely howl of a hound.
Or a daisy poking out of a lawn
and wondering what the hell
it's got itself into.
Quick God,
get behind the controls.
You've got the noises right,
the trucks, the cars,
the shuffle of mill-workers
down the sidewalk.
But your light meter is off.
Your air controls are set to smog.
Maybe this is your revenge
for this being city.
Man gets above himself
one skyscraper at a time.
How boastful his hotels.
How blasphemous his statues.
You're paying him back
for a bridge or two
or a tower or an overpass.
For an hour or more
you won't left him see
what he has wrought.
Then the haze bums off.
In the head, of all places.

THE SPELL OF AFTER RAIN

Snails glide slow across the sidewalk,
but almost skate down slippery basswood leaves.
A spider darts along the fingers of its web,
stops short at every mirror of the lingering rain-drops.
Having cruelled me, the weather is now full of
apologies and sunshine.
Birds drink from fluttering pools.
Trees suck up their surrounds.
A beetle crawls over my shoe.
Insect and I are full of ourselves,
glad to be here.

It's just a short walk
to the pond of leaping fish.
How much more eager
those frantic bolts into mid-air
now that their circus tent has been replenished.
Herons spread their full regalia, white to blue.
With clouds dispersed,
reflection is at its height.

Of course, I adore water lilies,
white and tapering and gently dunked
a pollen's breath beneath the surface.
Better than Monet, I figure.
But, then again, nature doesn't have to haul
its easel, paints and brushes to this spot.

Soon enough the field will dry,
my body will be nothing more
than the business of the blood.
I will flop my weight amid tender blades.
Grass, my superior, while I sleep, forgive me.

John Grey has been previously published in the Worcester Review, South Carolina Review and The Pedestal. He lives in Rhode Island.

Isaiah Vianese

ROBIN

A Frank Sinatra tune plays for you
in a dive downtown. I'm warm with whiskey
at the bar, and then with coffee,
sobering up at a corner table.

I wear this heavy coat to please you,
and you wear that frozen shell.
Perhaps tonight, love, I'll come back.

Isaiah Vianese's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cherry Blossom Review, The Fourth River and Clockwise Cat. He lives and writes in Missouri.

October 2008

2008-09-29T09:34:00.000-07:00

This month features Channie Greenberg
(KJ Hannah Greenberg)

Shiv’ah

Shiv’ah.
Seven-folded, grief turns, spirals,
Disintegrates. Departs.
Directing humility in fragments,
Burning here, there, incalculably.

Some bits start healing, while
Words of consolation
Fail
When buffeting utter sorrows.

We reach in, all sobs and tears,
Culling kindness toward days holding
Compassion home to everyone
Who comes, sits floorward, besides
The wounded. Family

Fixes character
Our souls redirect certain thoughts
Toward Oneness’ Mercy.

This time of wailing
Fades hours otherwise
Sailed through with doctors or away
From sudden crises.

“Normal” becomes a place
Where stars pull Earth
Skyward; its unreachable horizons
Linger; heart-felt understanding
Never grasped, yet life renews.

Differently, at present,
Nightfall’s horn calls
First-degrees of sorrow,
Followed quickly by crummy customs
Innocently meant to sooth.

Prayers emerge, compensate,
A best effort.
Time makes friends, again
With mourners.

1960’s Fraternity Pin

A kiss,
Of gold and blue,
Inlaid with attachment,
Announces modestly to others,
Our set.

Channie Greenberg's most recent work has appeared in: The Jerusalem Post, Calligraphy, Hamodia, The Externalist, Doorknobs and Bodypaint, Type-A Moms, Fallopian Falafel Zine, The Clarity of the Night, Joyful! and Tuesday Shorts. In the near future, her articulated irreverence will be published by: Poetica Magazine, Bewildering Stories, The Blue Jew Yorker, AntipodeanSF, and The Mother Magazine.

When not engaged in wordplay, Channie paints, builds ceramics, and supplies small spatulas to imaginary hedgehogs. She also dreams about the day when her children will correctly sort the laundry.

September 2008

2008-08-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

This Month Features Khadija Anderson and G. David Schwartz with Jennifer Wiehe

Khadija Anderson

Villanelle for Your Body

Your skin and my skin are the same
Collapsing together as one
in the mirror we play it again

Tendons run down your arm into hand
meant to grab clutch my body to yours
Your skin and my skin are the same

Inhale chests attach at each breath
skin swells on my belly my lips
In the mirror we play it again

Arm around me palm pressing my breast
your hand now is grasping my wrist
Your skin and my skin are the same

You finger each gasp of my skin
I worship your hands as they glide
your skin and my skin are the same

In the mirror we play it again

-----------------------------------------------------

sacred things

we wish we could hold them
they exist in eros
exist in bodies
concave surface of reality
most misunderstand
myself yourself
we mix them up
purposely
not purposely
the holes we have created
some cracked surface
light piercing through
always light

--------------------------------------------

may in deadwood, oregon

a sudden wind blew through the valley
sending wild cherry blossoms cascading
a torrent of pale beauty

we hiked into the forest
past hanging moss and cedar stumps
through silent alder

white percherons roamed freely
elk grazed across the meadow
it began to mist

------------------------------------------
Khadija Anderson is a Butoh dancer, poet, and alumni of The Evergreen State College. She just relocated back to Los Angeles after 18 years exile in Seattle. Khadija is a mother to 4 children, ages 23 to 5 and she collaborates with her eldest son in her dance company, Tanden Butoh. Her work has been published in Commonline Project, The Ticket, The Ark, Here & Now, online whispers & [Shouts] and Gazoobitales.

G David Schwartz and Jennifer Wiehe

Put Your Hands On My Shoulder

Put your hands on my shoulder.
Pull me close to you .
Touch your nose to mine and
Let what will be just be.
Oh, to let all inhibitions go
would be so grand.
It would be sheer ecstasy.
But it cannot go much farther
than us holding hands.

August 2008

2008-07-31T06:38:00.000-07:00

This month features Isaiah Vianese

DRIFTING

We're losing my Great-Grandmother,
her memories
leaking through a crack
no one can mend.

She's sleeping more often,
drifting away from us,
her family, every body
that came from her body.

She's walking away
in dreams of her mother
making sauce at the stove,
dipping the wooden spoon
into the paste and garlic
to stir in spices,
and then tapping the instrument
dry on the rim.

She's slipping away
quickly, quietly, forgetting
streets with their stop signs,
forgetting how to
turn back around.

PRIVATE TONGUE

Great Grandma sits by the window
to watch the birds feed.
When a starling
or another homely bird
shoves the others
out of the way,
she scolds it
in its own language.

These days
there is so little of her
I understand.

As I set the table for dinner,
Grandma allows herself to drift
again into memories of her homeland,
giving so much to that country
not even the smell of lasagna
calls her back.

She mutters to herself
while she sleeps
as if she has so much
left to say.
I try to wake her,
but she keeps whispering,
giving me her prophecy
in hopes I can decipher
her private tongue.

REGRET

The trees lining the salt mine
have grown into death thirsty
as pillar after pillar
has been carried to the surface.
Their bark burned away,
all that remains are black shells
of leaves once grown.

I make my way
through the dead.
Here a farmer once lived,
herding his cattle across the road.
There my Great-Grandmother worked
packing peas and corn into cans,
wearing a white apron and sweat.

This is what our world has become:
a road lined with bodies,
drivers making their way
on gas they can't afford,
a memory of a life once lived.

Isaiah Vianese's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cherry Blossom Review, The Fourth River and Clockwise Cat. He lives and writes in Missouri.

July 2008

2008-06-29T03:59:00.000-07:00

This month features Felino Soriano

An Assurance of Understanding

Including evaluation, sound tunnels
with open eyes, eyes in an
enveloping scope toward
drawing a body atop body,
facsimile of faith. A divulgence

called upon to incorporate consistency,
compatibility with that of
historical divulgences. Routine
repeats itself, repeats
because voice knows its body best.
Within circles
wings flutter a fathomed newness,
blinking eyes. This is the sound tunneling
amid the body of faith:

say to oneself a language of content—
darkness will control movement
by embrace, circling the body
dialect, calmly.

Intricate Steps Toward a Thing

Around the corner of the searching
a head deposits the eyes of the
use, the replacement of monetary
employment, the body circles itself,
the surroundings
finds a connection to a body of comprehension,
completeness.
Easy to juxtapose
call/levitate, among a species of departing
atop earth's darkened need. The searching
equates to moments of paused
sections
elapsed along an equator
halved into sectioned findings. The poetry
is here. A poetry is here. Reactionary
writing allowing for mirrors to ascertain
found echoes.

Regarding Specialized Time

Moments are when time intertwines
with elastic instants,
unrolling before the mind's
copasetic opening, a royal dexterity.

While irregular occurrences vanish
a mouth mutters within tone
-strange premises. Knowing
flash arrives after sound,
the tongue can whisper in disappointment.
We say betterment, the voice
of content crawls in dualism:

structured enhancement, allowance
within venerable bodies; the affected
cares for the contaminated,
erasing with body-thick
advancement of colorful
nuances.

Felino Soriano, from California is a philosophy student and Case
Manager working with developmentally disabled adults. His chapbook
"Exhibits Require Understanding Open Eyes" was published by and is
available through Trainwreck Press, 2008. His poems appear or are
forthcoming at BlazeVOX, Sugar Mule, Zone, Unlikely Stories 2.0,
Clockwise Cat, and elsewhere. Visit www.felinosoriano.com for a
complete publication history and for more information.

June 2008

2008-05-27T10:04:00.001-07:00

This month features John Grey

A PAGE OUT OF A BIOGRAPHY

I finished the book on the plane ride down here.
Not even biography will give me truth.
The words are surface, that's all.
Inanition is a word that seems to have
lost a consonant or two along the way.
And that's the subject of this book.
Another's life approached like a botanist.
So which year was trillium?
What emotion was blue-vetch?
So I go to the writer's house instead.
Hemingway's cats ignore me.
The guide's a font of little information.
Yes, I know he wrote "The Old Man Of The Sea."
But where did he spit and why?
So Papa, it's to the bar, a cheap drink,
a whirling fan, a parrot in a cage.
Hemingway sat here so keep them coming.
I'll remember nothing of this night
except that it was in my life, not his.

HEYDAY

All winter,
the back and forth
of desert war.
I have done this country's
dichotomy to death.
Better just rest on the couch,
pull up some poems over me
like blankets.

Our end is getting closer anyhow.
My end,
the country's end,
the world's end.
Why fight it?
Why even write it?

A poem won't fight back
when the enemy pounces.
Look how white, how still,
the paper lies beneath my eyes.
Just the kind of tears
I would shed.

My watch ticks.
The wall-clock tocks.
Time's such a cruel conspiracy.
So what's next:
the well-spring of blood,
the summer of more and more discontent,
the fall of one theory, the birth of another?

And then another winter,
more desert war.
And the country that brought you
both Mark Twain and Rush Limbaugh.
Better just rest on the couch,
pull up some blankets over me,
the ones from my heyday.

THOSE GREEN TOMATOES

Feel the chill,
wrap the green tomatoes.
Take in the yard litter,
the wobbly bicycle,
the one shoe.
Enlist an army of logs
to bum to nothing
in the cause of your warmth,
your coziness.
Dig out the gloves, the tokes,
from the bottom of the closets.
Lay out the sweaters on the bed,
in order of thickness,
name each after a Winter month.
Write to someone
so you'll get a letter back
when it's too bitter,
too thick with snow,
to go outside and see another.
Prepare for human contact
when there's nothing
of the sun left,
when the cold ices over
everything but affection
for the one you haven't heard from
in a long time.
Feel the chill,
unwrap the green tomatoes.
With heat lamps,
shades drawn,
bright light,
ripen what is near.

John Grey has been published recently in Agni, Worcester Review, South Carolina Review and The Pedestal, with work upcoming in Poetry East and Cape Rock. He is an Australian born poet, playwright, musician. His latest book is “What Else Is There” from Main Street Rag.

May 2008

2008-04-30T08:11:00.000-07:00

This month features Michael Brownstein

CHICAGO

I have come back to this place of snow
and frozen water. A hard wind forces
snow snakes across plowed asphalt. Already
the white shine of winter is dirty grey.
I have heard the tall buildings make this place
immune to tornado. Once Stephen and I
walked from the bus stop to our apartment,
the wind like infantry at close quarter.
Stephen flagged a cab with a block to go.
We have hurricane winds, but no hurricanes;
a rising lake, but no floods; accumulations of snow,
but no whiteouts. I have traveled far.
It is late and it is not late. Stephen collapsed
on a bus, an episode of the brain, and vanished
into a system offering little help. I moved
to a house ravaged by squirrel and termite.
Snow covers dead leaves I do not rake.
A small pond in the back is half frozen.
Dead weeds bend to the wind, break. Lately
I have worried over a legacy, my daughter
hiding in the closet crying; my son
on his dinosaur rug placing models
of komodo dragons and tribobibites,
pumas and saber toothed tigers,
men and broken pottery.

THE COLOR NEAR THE RIVER

Gray bricks of mud
and silver water bandaging itself.
A swale and a bottom wetland,
the paper wasp nest, the paper birch,
a stream and the log covering it.
Somehow a stronghold of buckthorn,
poison berry, a groundswell of root.
Can you not see it? Mud hard dried,
sun dried, hand dried, chapped
gray and leather.

COME STAY WITH ME AND BE MY NIGHT

Come stay with me and be my night,
We’re done with dinner’s clutter
As stars blister through the moonlit light.

Water anchors moon streams white
Across the wake, across the cutter.
Come stay with me and be my night.

The children at peace, everything’s right,
Goat milk, huckleberry bread, apple butter.
Stars blister into pimpled light.

The children dream, the wind grows slight,
The storm is but a mutter,
Come stay with me and be my night.

Now comes a fullness full and bright,
Leaves skip across the gutter
As stars blister into moons of light.

My love is strong. It knows to fight.
I no longer need to stutter.
Stars blister through the moonlit light.
Come stay with me and be my night.

Michael 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, After Hours, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review and others. In addition, he has eight poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004) and What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005).

Brownstein teaches elementary school in Chicago’s inner city, studies authentic African instruments with his students, conducts grant-writing workshops for educators and the State of Illinois Title 1 Convention, and records performance and music pieces with grants from the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs, the Oppenheimer Foundation, BP Leadership Grants, and others.

April 2008

2008-04-01T04:54:00.000-07:00

This month features John Grey and William Doreski

John Grey

THEY WERE WHAT THEY DID

The man has pigs.
What does that mean?
He flops in mud, eats slop?

He's coming to date
your sister, they say.
Will he ring the bell or grunt?

What was her last guy?
A plumber? Did he rattle like pipes?
You know I believe he did.

And now up the path
will strut a prize hog,
fat and hairy and curly tailed.

He'll boast how he wins
prizes at fairs,
not how many chops he'll make.

Another potential Mr Right
with floppy ears, four trotters.
Still, what with the price

of pork these days,
and the on-going surplus
of love in this family.

MAYBE

Could be.
That's all.
No way of knowing.
Maybe nothing to know.
And nothing to believe.
It will be or it won't.
Can't tell if it's
moral, licentious,
apposite, inapt,
to celebrate
or sorrow over.
Can't say and never will.
Magna est Veritas et.
Truth will out.
Laws of the universe.
Can't avoid them.
But it will all seem like
an accident anyhow.
And, when it happens,
I'll be crawling from the wreckage
or crushed by metal.
Whole or broken,
resolute or resigned.
And my mouth...
maybe it will form the word
"Maybe."

QUARRY MAN

what my grandfather knew
as the town quarry
is now a couple of dozen
marble cubes
dumped at an abandoned railhead,
each approximately
five feet square

where he swung
the sweaty pick-ax
is the last act of
some now defunct
marble works,
its truck sunk up
to the axles in the muddy road,
its burden dumped
to help pull it clear

it's still about
the thriving businesses
of fifty years ago,
his walk to
the well of stone
with lunch pail
and whistled tune

but only as its ghosts,
as the way his stories
creak busily
back and forth across
these bones

John Grey is an Australian born poet, playwright, and musician. His latest book is "What Else Is There" from Main Street Rag. He has been most recently featured in Cape Rock, Weber Studies, Writers Bloc and the Connecticut Review, as well as Agni, Worcester Review, South Carolina Review and The Pedestal.

William Doreski

Message from Paris

Your messages ride the ether
and arrive in little whispers
that catch me while I’m feeding
the cats or brushing my teeth.

You remind me that in Paris
ice rims the Seine and the fluster
of pigeons explains the lack
of tourists in the famous cafes.

Flu has laid Europe low,
but here in New Hampshire hardly
anyone coughs in public, the fear
of contaminants so extreme

we’ve abandoned all handshakes
and forbidden those airy kisses
the lean and chatty people prefer.
Everyone’s reading Hart Crane

to try to detect in his poems
the notice for his endless leap
into the cringing Atlantic.
When I say “everyone” I mean

only me, but I want to warn you
that as you fly home from Paris
you’ll spot the fatalistic sea
brimming in the corner of your eye.

You’ll telegraph something wry
to me and I’ll try to respond,
but the gray streets of Paris
will retain their power for weeks

or months, even if they dead-end
where mind and ocean meet without
the faintest sound to warp us
together, mutually alert.

Performing Old Beatles Songs

So you’ve run off to join a chorus
that performs old Beatles songs
at veterans’ clubs and nursing homes.
I’ve tracked you through olive drab
corridors, down asphalt driveways,
up antiseptic stairways, across
non-acoustic concert halls.
I’ve seen you brushing shoulders
with bald men grinning with lust
and women frizzy as sagebrush
but can’t get close enough to talk.

The months and years drizzle past
with gallons of cheap wine sloshing
in the gutters. The chorus travels
to Berlin, Moscow, Bucharest,
Hong Kong, Singapore, New Delhi,
my passport flapping in your wake.
I can’t catch up with you. The space
where the chorus has just performed
gapes like a recent surgery.
Strangers tell me how they admire
your clear quartz voice reclaiming
the tunes of their childhood. I press
my hands to my jowls and mock
a famous painting, my scream so loud
you shudder in your hotel room
and your latest lover slinks away
with his narrative incomplete.

One day I’ll confront you before
the performance. You’ll recognize
my pale yellow aura and shake
my hand like a dog’s paw. Too bad
my expression has so eroded
over twenty years you’ll refuse
to name me, refuse to acknowledge
the thousands of miles I’ve wasted
memorizing every Beatles song
so that when I engage you
I won’t violate the copyrights
you think will someday heal you.

Natural, Not Property Rights

To preserve a little piece of world
I declare the local landfill
a free and self-governing township.
I’ve drawn a line in the snow
that crosses the half-frozen river
and includes ten wooded acres
and the field where every summer
community gardens flourish
with vegetables left to rot
by genteel citizens too important
to harvest their useful crop.

Three men work at the landfill
bundling aluminum, paper, two
grades of plastic to recycle
for a modest profit. By day
my township has an economy.
At night, the employees gone,
I camp on a heap of asphalt
left by highway reconstruction,
and before a gushing wood-fire
compose a new town charter
to present to the state legislature.
I select myself the first
and only selectman. Also
chief of police, chairman of zoning.

The groans of lovers in parked cars,
engines idling, monoxide
dulling their nerves, offends me;
but if I could tax their gasps
and cries I could further empower
my modest little community.
So before new snow obscures
the boundary of this township
I’ll issue a proclamation
of natural, not property rights,
and declare the cold wind free
to browse wherever it pleases
and the river welcome to flood.

William Doreski teaches writing and literature at Keen State College in New Hampshire. His work has appeared in many journals and small press collections, most recently in Another Ice Age (AA Books 2007).

March 2008

2008-02-28T11:20:00.000-08:00

This month features Howie Good.

FOR THE WOMAN WHO WALKED OUT DURING MY READING
To what should I attribute it,
the influence of sunspots

or the general decay of manners?
Please don't say it was me,

the dull sincerity of my words,
their untreated depression,

that sent you rushing off.
Let me think there was a man

(with a ponytail, perhaps)
a vase of dried wildflowers,

a bedroom wall on which
you put a hand for balance

as you stepped out of your skirt,
your micro panties, and then yourself

and delicately into a love poem.

THE CURE FOR BOREDOM
Invite a word inside, doesn't matter which,
they all suffer the same strange inability

to distinguish between bright and dark,
the spastic black shadows of a candle flame,

but if it refuses to tell where the loot is hidden,
or even how many birds constitute a flock,

shove its fingers in a drawer and slam the drawer shut
so that neighbors can hear a concerto of screams,

and when you're done, and it's mashed and misshapen
like a nail repeatedly and inexpertly struck,

fix it a drink and might as well have one yourself.

HAIRCUT
There's no wait this early.
I hang up my coat and climb into the chair.
He flips a gold barber's drape over me
with a practiced twest of his wrists.
I've known him a long time, 22 years,
ever since we moved to town.
Talking to my reflection in the mirror,
he says they've found a spot on his pancreas.
He asks what the pancreas does.
I try to remember from 10th grade biology.
My wife, he starts to say, but stops
and shakes his head, and then the only sound
is the bonelike clicking of the dancing scissors.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of three poetry chapbooks, Death of the Frog Prince (2004) and Heartland (2007), both from FootHills Publishing, and Strangers & Angels (2007) from Scintillating Publications. He was recently nominated for the second time for a Pushcart Prize.

February 2008

2008-01-27T13:20:00.000-08:00

This month features Susan Marie Watkins and Hope Jordan

Susan Marie Watkins

Thou Art That

In India
I would join the sacred cows wandering untethered
Garlands of flowers like ropes of yellow, orange & red
Draped around their necks

I would walk the deserted streets of Mohenjo-Daro in distant Sind
To hear the voices of long-departed sages
Whose spirits roam the abandoned city &
Whisper softly in the wind
Like the rustling leaves of Bodhgaya

I would drift along the reedy banks of the Ganges
In the algae-scented evening
Wearing a sari of poppy red &
A billowing orange veil of sheerest silk
I would be the center of the universe
Cloud-shrouded and mysterious
As the distant Himalayas

I would daub my forehead with sindoor &
Visit jungle-ensnared temples
To thrill beneath the swarming primal images
The teeming carvings dripping with concealed wisdom
Of things both sacred & profane

I would be an ancient, saffron-robed sadhu
One with the fecund smells that rise and settle with the breeze
While droning OM's roll over me and
Images, sacred and profane, draw me back
To the heavy, earthy smell of the cows
To their flower garlands
And to their deep rootedness in the now

She Wanders

The Thames, milky jade under a gray sky;
As Big Ben chimes &
Tennyson & Browning molder
Beneath their poet's slabs in Westminster
Grass & daffodils push up green shoots
In the Tower's waterless moat &
Seven ebony ravens keep mute vigil
Over the Chapel of St. Peter Ad Vincula.

In Trafalgar Square where
Lord Nelson's column stands haughtily erect,
There are pigeons everywhere,
On my head, my hands, my outstretched arms.

In last year's yellow, too-short Easter dress,
I seek Paul in Abbey Road.
Then eat crepes, alone
At a little cafe in Petticoat Lane,
Wishing I were in love
With someone...

In Stratford, I walk a narrow path
Past whimpering daffodils
Trembling in a glacial wind
That penetrates my yellow dress.
'Stupid Californian', Whitney laughs,
Guiding us on
Through moss-encrusted headstones
To Trinity Chapel
Where Shakespeare's bones rot in the chancel.

That night, crossing the river
To the Black Swan,
I play my new harmonica, &
Drink too much honey-spiced wine.
I sit on Whitney's lap &
He kisses me
As the clock strikes midnight, &
So I go

Back to my hotel,
Alone in the sharp darkness
Playing a mournful riff.
I stop on the bridge & watch the Avon flow.
A stray swan like a white shadow
Floats on its inky surface &
Yellow daffodils,
Luminous in the moonlight,
Shiver on its banks.
& I tremble with them,
Filled with a glorious fear,
On the cusp of lust.

Susan Marie Watkins is a native Californian who recently relocated to northwest Wyoming to enjoy a simpler life. She has been a full-time educator for the past 22 years, but is now taking a break from her career to pursue her passion for writing.

Hope Jordan

Erosion

Tell me of fish and evening and sorrows,
Ice-covered creeks, fast and shallow, and dark
As departures, today's or tomorrow's.
The moon was a bonfire, now it's a spark.
Give me your burdens of rain and dull cold,
Terrible truths that lie under the snow.
Words are the lovers that never grow old,
Words like the ocean, eternal and slow.
Tell me of ghosts, electricity, bones,
Fathers and children, slow blood and weeping.
Who knows the secrets that live in the stones?
Only the water, pooling and seeping
Down deep in the ribcage, under the heart,
Wave upon wave with no end and no start.

After Oz

No matter what the wizard said,
I'm not smart enough for her.
It's just the two of us again.
We both grew tired of the Lion.
And the Tin Man? He was a third wheel,
balanced us out for awhile,
but that got old before we reached the Emerald City.

Kansas is a little dull after Oz,
but we travel a lot. We were hiking out west
when the dog ran off - that was hard for her.
And she's twisted her ankle in those ruby shoes
too many times to count.
She leaves them in the car now.
She doesn't listen
when I tell her she doesn't need them.

I'm a caricature of a man,
good enough to scare away the black flapping things -
but who knows how long that will last?

She watches the weather
like a farm girl, still hates tornadoes.
A windy night brings her dreams
of red skies inside hourglasses running out.
A windy night brings me dreams too -
apples hard as rocks, crows with human faces,
and dry tinder, to close to the embers.

Hope Jordan's poems have been published in such journals as Many Mountains Moving and Green Mountains Review, and her fiction appeared in the anthology Scream When You Burn. A trustee of the NH Writers Project, she is also a proud alumnus of the Chenango Valley Writers Conference at Colgate University and a long-time member of the Yogurt Poets, a writing group based in Concord, NH. She has competed in poetry slams in Boston, New York and Manchester, NH. Jordan has a dual degree in English and Magazine Journalism from Syracuse University.

January 2008

2008-01-01T09:26:00.000-08:00

This month features favorite poems by Mary Oliver and Marge Piercy

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

© Mary Oliver.

The Air Like Stained Glass Cuts Me

Lavender light through fretwork
of small panes, boughs,
burnt orange horizon
impaled on Protestant steeples.
Bach suite for unaccompanied
cello: passion and wisdom
wrestling, supple pythons.
I am unaccompanied.
The scaffolding of the maple
is stripped bare. The last
leaves perch in the plane
tree huddling like robins
that should have fled south.

Pinot chardonnay in the glass
we bought together, wine
whose roots grow from the soil
that bore you like a
sunflower. Pamela,
Pamela, there are no
good reasons for loss.
The miles between us are doors
you have slammed, thousands
of no’s cried
from deep in your spine.

I wanted my love to rest
on you light
as falling mapleleaves, I
wanted my love to warm
you softly as goosedown
as your body could breathe,
I wanted my love
to show you your face
in a mirror of gold
shining from inside
like the sun.

But you could not give
credence to love that did
not seize you by your nape shaking
you like the assault of a tomcat.
You were suspicious of love
that did not come dangling labels
like a janitor’s keys. You doubted
a love open to the sky
as any planted field.

The burning horizon
slowly tamps out and the snake’s
head of the needle strikes
blindly at record’s end.
But where you walk it is afternoon
still and time to remember,
to turn and speak to the woman
no longer at your side.

© Marge Piercy

December 2007

2007-11-30T10:12:00.000-08:00

This month features David Kowalczyk
and Christian Ward

David Kowalczyk

A Small Sacrifice

His innocence was erased
last year by the lion priest,
who consumes
young boys.

His childhood is forever destroyed.
He is lost in astral clouds,
in constant prayers
to obscure saints,
child martyrs all.

Zihuatenejo

Mellow as a mango.
The women, ages nine to ninety,
always dressed in black.
Lavender breezes and waves
nestled on pearled sands.
Flames and flowers emerging
from the laughing surf.
Restless unicorns wandering the beach.
Instant love and never-ending sunsets.
The liquid hush of the jacaranda dawn.

Getting Drunk With The Moon

Darkness upon the waters,
a plague upon the sky,
the tired old moon rides
low above the barren trees.

His edges remain intact.
In his life, he has touched
far too little.

When children ask him,
"What are nightmares made of?',
his reply is inevitably the same.

"Real fear takes imagination."

The sky becomes a field
of burning stones.

David Kowalczyk lives and writes in Tempe, Arizona. He has taught English in South Korea and Guatemala, as well as in several colleges in the USA. His work has appeared in a variety of venues, including Maryland Review, The Buffalo News, St. Ann's Review, and California Quarterly. He is the former editor of Gentle Strength Quarterly.

Christian Ward

The River

after James Richardson

In the museum of the river,
a family portrait can be seen
on its bed. How it escaped
the city, I'll never know.

Standing on the stone bridge,
I watch wind trace its outline
on the water. It is a woman.
That is always the way

of the forgotten, no matter
what they once were. Evening.
The sun starts hiding behind
a blind of night. The house

where I once lived is swollen
after the rain. A willow
whose foliage touches the soil
is wider than the house.

'The faces are here' a caption
reads. They are probably in the bridge
which looks like everything.
They were swept into it. Only their

surprise has been left behind.
I am swept up. The bridge
is moving, though the river is still.
No one ever notices the end of the road.

Fade

A crow of dead leaves
ca-caws in the wind.
Sunlight plays on swings.

In the shirtsleeve
of the house, a woman
is becoming a museum

exhibit. Moths exit
the labyrinth of thirties
coats and blouses

to flicker around her
fading light. Cars move
closer, drawn to her electricity.

Widescreen

The widescreen hurricane
agitated the sea. Trawlers,
picked up by a King Kong fist,
were slammed into a skyscraper
of wave. Thunder boomed
in stereo. Lightning pouted,
playing the role of a helpless
damsel. Meanwhile, a Monarch
butterfly was emitting its electricity
somewhere in Mexico.

Christian Ward is a 27 year old London based poet whose work can be seen in journals such as the Fairfield Review, Why Vandalism? and Nthposition. His fourth chapbook, Slippage, will be released next year and Dark Matter Lullabies, a chapbook of experimental poetry, is currently in preparation. His myspace page can be found at myspace.com/wordfuck

November 2007

2007-10-31T06:07:00.000-07:00

This month features
Brian Watson and Beth Stolar Kehayes

Brian Watson

Summer Silence

Silenced by the only thing that ever gave you peace,
you wander wildclad
through the thunder-scorched night air.
Hot, wet pavement beneath your feet,
autumnal rainwater soaked by summer's heat.
Wandering, wondering,
lost in a careless fog,
silence wrapped around the hazy streets.
Playing the guessing game with yourself,
leading to the inevitable:
"What if, what if, what if?"
Half-formed situations in your brain,
miscarriages in a pregnant mind,
in a night of aborted ambitions.
Trailing ideas that lead down the same path;
conception, obsession.
Enveloped in pressing humidity,
beginning to discover yourself.

Emptiness

The bed seems so big since you left it.
Its twisted and coiled sheets so lonely without you here.
Yet the incredible impression of your body remains;
on the bed and in my head.
The sculpted impression of your head
is molded into the cottonwhite pillow
that contrasted so beautifully with your hair.
Our scents hang in the air above me like a wedding veil.

It seems so long ago, oh, it seems so long ago when hours ago
you and I, together forever in memory,
belonged to the breathless world of fullbodied touches.
Our honeyed lips and satined skin
roiled and flowed with the sheets
that encased us like a womb:
a resolute barrier against the emptying night.

Still, our unending kisses had to end,
and the passionmarks that resulted will fade with time.
And you my love, you too will fade with time,
and so will I,
until nothing of us remains.

Eden

Shadows in my mind,
like leaves in the garden of Eve.
Bare feet on primordial earth.
The sense of inheritance beneath my feet,
something far greater than I,
forever beyond me.

Patterned shadows filter across the ground,
moving to the breath of the wind,
shapely, shifting.
Trees and seeds, unreaped harvest,
untouched fields.

Ivy twines around the trees,
carpets moss on the sharp stones,
and nature goes on around me.

Still,
underneath the willow's shadow,
beneath the mossy granite,
Lilith blossoms in the secret places.

Brian Watson is an 18 year old poet who has been writing for only five years. He attends Keene State College in New Hampshire and has been published in inside me, a production of the Live Poet's Society of NJ. He is majoring in English and writing and hopes to become a college professor.

Beth Stolar Kehayes

Temperance

She hugged herself
in summer’s twilight
consoled by
life’s palette.
Alone.
Time would temper the
longing. Pink
sky ebbed into orange,
twisting
against a violet streak
amidst the birds’ mantra.
She might believe
in magic.
The air cool, fresh from swim
as her wet body
embraces hairs rising
and dripping.
A journey to
forfeit fabric
for skin.

The Sand Dollar

The petals cracked
as I fed an African Violet,
ruffled greens on a sill.
The test remains halved
with its five doves
scattered,
at my feet.

The Echinoid is a mystery,
primitive beauty.
Five keyholes in which to feed
the flower hatch marks
like Leonardo,
cartilage fragile,
as ghosts of the sea.
The fantasy I could recreate
were I with rapidograph,
charcoal,
and soft granite pencils.

The mouth has gaping chambers,
where stalagmites mingle
with stalactites
and I can see a monk among the caverns
as well as plankton
being swept by cilia.

A dove’s wings crumble
from my thumb
and I am left with an anchor.
And four doves to set free.
I am inspired
to draw the beauty
of your spine
against the calcified
cusp
of what I am
unsure of
yet hold in my palm.

Asbury Park Repentance

I am unable to recreate words
only the title
and the bishop’s black sleeve
while throwing a gilt cross into the sea.
The cool cavern of Convention Hall
with its friezes of mermaids and dolphins
hovering like angels.
Our hum of rubber tires over concrete
smoothed by years of sandy heels
as we neared opaque salt covered doors
to feel the slats of the boardwalk
rumbling.
The day was hot for September
and the baby was still in a stroller.
I was seven pounds lighter even with the guilt.
The youth dove to redeem
what their futures had not yet prophesied
and I in the garb of offense.
The ache of not forgetting a face
or the timeless shadow in deft tears
of all that I have carried
and will always seek.

Beth Stolar Kehayes has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The College of New Jersey, USA. After a twenty year hiatus from the discipline of writing she has been making up for lost time. Her poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in over twenty publications, e-zines and print, including Tipton Poetry Journal, La Fenetre, ken*again, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Beauty/Truth Press. and Gold Dust Magazine. Beth is currently Co-Editor of Flutter Poetry Journal.

October 2007

2007-09-30T04:24:00.000-07:00

My favorite month (My birthday month).
Features Paul Hostovsky and Catrina Porter.

Paul Hostovsky

Kiss

On the train
heading south
all the seats
facing north
like the meeting
of east and west our
heads turning slowly
on the headrests
toward each other
like two completely different
ways of life coming together
on either side of a body
of water
our eyes like
scouts or messengers
studying each other
from opposite shores
before entering
that water
wading through it
chest-high
exchanging aloft
the moist and crumpled
messages

Civil Resolution

Whereas
an erection is no
reflection of love;
and whereas a yellow
hard-hat is no
flower; and whereas
a man pausing on the sidewalk
to look through a peep-hole
at men in hard-hats building
a building is not
only a beautiful thing
but quite possibly a joy forever--
now therefore be it resolved
that all of the bulldozers
and all of the backhoes
at construction sites all over the city
observe a moment of stillness
at exactly
lunchtime
letting the tines of their buckets
rest quietly on the ground
in honor of
credulous hungry lovers
all over this great city,
and be it further resolved
that a copy of this resolution
be posted above
all the post no bills
and hard-hat area signs
throughout our beloved city
which is growing
in all directions
for all our great love.

Fishing Vest

It had a hundred pockets.
I don't like fishing but I like hyperbole.
I like a poem that can hold
numerous small swindles
and lots of harmonicas, a childhood memory
and an imitation turd from a novelty shop
on Hancock Street. I saw the vest in the window
of the sporting goods store, and I thought:
now every poem shall have its pocket.
I thought let there be plenty of pens
and pocket combs, a box of raisins,
a pocket watch, a pocket dictionary,
and maybe a pack of cigarettes. I hadn't
smoked in years, but now I wanted to buy a pack
just to carry around in my pocket like a poem
I'm working on, taking it out now and then
to keep me company, to keep my fingers
and my breath busy, which is why
I think I bought that first one all those years ago.

Paul Hostovsky's poems appear widely online and in print. He has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and the Writer's Almanac. He works in Boston as an interpreter for the Deaf. To read more of Paul's poetry, visit his website at www.paulhostovsky.com

Catrina Porter

Come away with me...

And skip rocks
along the rings of Saturn.
Wish upon a star
that shoots like an arrow
from Athena's bow
waging a war against the night.

Hop Scotch on the planets,
chalking out our space in the universe.

Straddle a comet
that streaks through a sapphire sky,
laughing,
as we try to pin its tail somewhere
on the skirts of the milkyway.

Come away with me...

Trail the edges of eternity,
and leave footsteps in the sands of time.

Catrina Porter is a 30-year-old female living in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Originally from Louisiana, she is single with no children. She enjoys writing, reading and listening to music. She has been writing poetry for nearly 20 years.

September 2007

2007-08-31T18:24:00.000-07:00

This month features an old friend who also happens to be a wonderful poet: Pete Crepeau

What I Didn't Do

I didn't touch your face as you slept
but it was not for a lack of wanting.
I heard your heaves as you quietly wept,
quite disconcerting, vividly haunting.

I couldn't touch the source of your pain,
if I could I would have erased it.
A star crossed moment has left its stain,
your withering heart sadly embraced it.

I never sang the song that you needed
when uplifting could have come to fore.
I weakly withdrew and sadly conceded
I was a companion and nothing more.

I could have held you long into the night
drawing out your desires for love.
This would have been perfect, a time to recite
all the loving words I'd been thinking of.

Ah, but I didn't touch your face or your heart
for my own fears bottled me so.
All of this non action has torn me apart,
I understand why you've chosen to go.

A Toothbrush is Missing

There’s two coat pegs by the back door,
one’s used, the other lays bare.
The hose that used to dry in the bathroom
is conspicuous in that it’s no longer there.

The queen size bed has far too much space,
I get lost in its vastness alone.
The dual basin vanity where we used to primp
holds one basin that’s dry as a bone.

The four-slice toaster is now only half used,
there’s always coffee to spare.
The society page of the paper is left untouched,
nobody’s here to attend the next gala affair.

It’s been just a week but these changes are noted,
deafening quiet fills singular air.
You sent for your things, now nothing remains,
just echoes of disenchantment, beyond repair.

Caught in a Moment

She held out her hand as an offer of love.
Her eyes spoke of rapture most deep.
I swear I heard orchestral strains from above
in this moment my heart longed to steep.

Her ethereal beauty caught my breath in a gasp,
her earthy warmth escaped in a rush.
How I longed to be the golden lock to her hasp,
giving voice to this long muted thrush.

She had come to me as if out of a dream
that had played time and again in my sleep.
Her movements flowing, much as a stream,
such pristine running waters, so deep.

Why, at this moment, did my dreams have a face
that I could gently reach out and touch?
There’d been no foreshadowing of this time and this place,
though I had ached for its reality so much.

Slowly I reached to take the hand she presented,
to play my oft-rehearsed role in this “eyes open” dream.
She faded to a wispy fog with a smile most demented
slipping away on a nefarious, dream-killing beam.

Cradling a Heart

You hold in your hands another’s heart,
cradled gently, given with great trust.
Proper care of this treasure, what an art,
soft and measured caring is a must.

The faith that’s been placed in your desire
to lovingly caress what you now hold,
never to be neglected or allowed to expire
should your burning embers grow cold.

You’re now the appointed sentry on post,
there to keep the treasure from knowing harm.
The breadth of your breast, a welcoming host
ensures this guest is loved and kept warm.

Hold fast the pulse of this object d’amore,
let it fill your own life with blessed light.
This care-taking mission’s a joy, not a chore,
that’s perfected over each day and night.

Pete Crepeau was raised in the small town of Newton Junction, NH. As a young man, he was involved in the world of pencil and charcoal sketching, winning awards for his art. He discovered a knack for lyrical poetry that pushed his visual art aside, leaving it in the dust. Pete now resides in Orlando, FL. His book, "Teeing Off & Grinning...A Middle Aged Duffer Looks at the Vagaries of Life in Verse" ISBN 1-4241-2623-1. is available from the following vendors: Amazon.com, Borders.com, Barnes&Noble.com and from the publisher at PublishAmerica.com. The book consists of 434 pages of his poetry and lyrical stories.

August 2007

2007-07-29T09:13:00.000-07:00

This month: John DeLaurentis and Felino Soriano.

John DeLaurentis

CANVAS OF DREAMS

Through the glass I see darkly,
The painting is marred by sweat,
The canvas has bled blood like tears,
At times its colors have disappeared.

But though the blank whiteness
Stands in front of the artist’s breath,
It desires a fresh coat of new colors,
Painted with the petrifaction of tears.

But the ken of the naked eye can’t see
All the dreams and visions spiritualized,
It only hopes to attempt to capture
The refractory mood of light.

THE CONTORTIONIST

The contortionist caught the eye
of the casual passerby
who contravened his condition.
This contest of agility,
Seemed a conundrum quite silly
to the nun from a convent nearby.

To her it seemed not conventional,
Quite contrary and not sensible,
To twist the body in unnatural ways.
But she smiled without control,
Then admonished him bold
to contribute to charity’s cause.

FIRST SIGHT

She stared into my eyes,
as if she wished to hook a line
onto the interior thoughts that
danced like marionettes in
the cortices of my mind.

Though I wished to let loose
the passion and fear, wrapped
up like a ball of string,
I could not seem
to find a way to unravel
the words on the tip of my
tongue and let them escape
into coherent sounds.

So she left with a smile,
but with eyes of defeat,
and as soon as she closed the door,
I coughed up syllables
that spilled onto
the paper that stared blankly
up at me, and taught me not
to give up after first sight.

John DeLaurentis received a B.A. in English and a minor in Modern Greek studies from Rutgers University, and a master's degree in English education from Rutgers Graduate School of Education. He is a Teacher of English and Creative Writing in his home state of NJ.

Felino Soriano

Rare is a Species of Underground Worth,
For Why Exist in the Fashion of Hiding?

Ornamented forms born beneath
specified light, whose unrefined genesis
wanting to be virtuosic schemas,
visualizing all aspects of articulate behavior.

Gauging various gradation,
conceptual philosophical reflection,
as in spiraled examples of
dialectical meaning,
movements spacing value,
visually processing modular tones
becoming no loner exiled.

Continuity develops a separate dialect,
splaying into an origin of metaphorical delusion,
birthing light of ornamented species,
gaining its development
from multiplying motions.

Though Relatively Unknown,
the Catalyst is Always Visible

Absent understanding of the awakened,
available visible, the taken care of
finds solace in solitude
behind closed off angles,
shadowed benevolence,
mechanical in movement,
multidimensional emotions.
Predetermination established
within a vernacular of certain believers,
those of a quality sewn into a fabric
invisible to others.

Understandable,
à la mode in the tradition of
antiestablishment following mechanism
molds of
Enlightenment age philosophers
has become considered catastrophic in believability,
and if construed within the balanced
mind inappropriately,
an existence no longer can fathom
proper reality.

Felino Soriano, from California, currently studying philosophy, is employed as a behavioral assistant. Through his occupation he is able to counsel, create goals with, care for, and learn from developmentally disabled adults. His poetry appears or is forthcoming in Black Mail Press, La Fenêtre, Rogue Poetry Review, Blaze VOX, Ken*Again, Ann Arbor Review, Blue Fifth Review, among others.

July 2007

2007-07-02T06:33:00.000-07:00

This month: G. David Swartz

G. David Swartz

When We Kissed

When we kissed
Time did not exist
We went walking
Through the ages
Back into the future
Talking 'bout the things we have yet to do
Together, me and you
When time did not exist

Plastic Surgery

Plastic surgery won’t help me
I have a face like a grunt
It’s my only face
Worn every place

Even if I don't want
Plastic surgery is an oxymoron

Don't taste like plastic nor
Is it obviously shorn

It’s just a word like most
To confuse the host
Plastic surety is more like it
To tell a face to get with it
And not top be burnt up
In and out of love

You Are An Extremely Interesting Person

You are an extremely interesting person
Always something to say
Yet never ever bolting
My thoughts away
In fact you make me think more
Of what I want to seek
In your face or anyplace
We may happen to meet
You are an enchanting woman
With wisdom as well as beauty
And as you cause me to think more
You become more beauty
No you aren't and yes you do

YES I ARNT AND NO I DO

I just know that I don't know what to say
And that is quite a thing not to not know
But you know who really cares
Besides you and me?
I once said no to your yes
And that caused a big why not
And I had little to so
'Cept think and so I thought
And thought and though then sought
So seeking I saw and caught
Not the answers to our problem yes our problem
So I simply sat and sat
And now, this huge now
Huger than a cow
And of course than a horse
Sat I down on cold cold ground
Not making a solid sound
Yet not definitely too quiet

We talked of your parents and my sisters
Death does take us all
But you and I are still alive

And plan to be for a while

G. David Schwartz - the former president of Seedhouse, the online interfaith committee. Schwartz is the author of A Jewish Appraisal of Dialogue. Currently a volunteer at Drake Hospital in Cincinnati, Schwartz continues to write. His new book, Midrash and Working Out Of The Book is now in stores or can be ordered.
Check out my book on Midrash

June 2007

2007-05-28T06:22:00.000-07:00

This issue features Lisa Engelbrektson DeWolf, Daniel S. Irwin and Steve Meador

Lisa Engelbrektson DeWolf

A Kind of Mourning

It kind of happened
One day
Un planned
It just came
And there you were
When you were still
Perfectly still.

I hardly said goodbye
But left you
In a shallow water grave,
forcing me to
Suffer your vacant space
Half waiting-
For the accident to unfold
And re-take place.

A Stain on my Sleeve

Down the stairs
I turn and look
say goodbye
down and around
and through the gate

And now I'm home
I take off my shirt
and notice a stain
a mark
from your corner of the world
by invitation only, I'm afraid
and I hope I will
but know I wont
ever wash it out.

Washing it would leave you
on an island in yours
SOS
hope it goes through
These things I take without taking
They're relics of yours and mine
this love we make without making
is beautiful
and thine

Love him to Pieces

Love him to pieces
as he breaks you down

and leaves his last comment

etched in your heart
replaying in your mind-

reminding you

that you can't shake his smile
his lips or his eyes.

Love him to pieces,
though you didn't want to at all
because if you knew this would happen

it would have dissolved.

Love him to pieces
as he cums and goes
and hope he'll be back

to break into pieces

your heart that can't beat
your face that can't see
your mouth that can't speak

of the pieces

that have broken and shattered
and scattered away.

I found Lisa at writerscafe.org hiding under the name of L. Jane English. Check her out! Her writing is honest and delightfully intense.

Daniel S. Irwin

Mary Bailey's Grandson

Mary Bailey's grandson
killed himself today.
Blew a big chunk
Of his brains
Right out.
His sister said that
he had a lot
of problems.
Now, not the
Least of which
Included a window
To the inside of his head.
I always though
He was a jerk, weird kid.
Always gave me trouble.
Don't miss him.
I got other cousins
Who are regular people.
Hope he ain't givin' Gramma
A hard time.

Anti-Climax

Feeling that the find
Was more of an anti-climax
To his lifelong efforts,
At the end of the day,
The renowned archaeologist
Simply throws his loose change
In the cup on his bedroom dresser.
Seems the Holy Grail does
Serve some purpose after all.

Daniel is an artist and writer (both a matter of opinion, he says, but I think he's definitely both). His work has been published in various magazines, e-zines, and journals in the US and abroad. His latest can be found in Cerebral Catalyst, The Local Writer, and Zygote In My Coffee.

Steve Meador

Against The Grain

Tales of the prolific spawn heroes,
usually rats and rabbits.
No mention of sparrows,
yet they arrived in waves that blackened
portions of the sky. Feathered tsunamis
that attacked in banzai charges,
for the kernels of corn dribbled
off trucks and carts parked
at the Rising Sun elevator.

The owner called us his gunnery crew.
He supplied the Daisy rifles, boxes of BBs
and a shooting gallery that bested
the booths at Cedar Point,
plus a pledge of a nickel for every head.
A quick lesson was given in silence,
leaving warm ball in his palm.
We made about fifty bucks the first month.

The owner flew out of his office once, flapping
his arms, as we were about to shoot a wounded bird.
He snatched it from the blacktop,
and in an instant another nickel was earned.
“Don’t waste the ammo on the wounded.”
I didn’t blink for that nickel,
but the sparrow did, its eyes between
the owner’s thumb and finger,
just before his arm whiplashed down.

Banter with an Editor

I like your pluck. Have any more?
You have a truck?
An old Whitman.
Ah, only starts after warming in the sun. Cockpit?
Freudian instrumentation. Jungian clutch. Burnsian tires.
Sees the way...Aye, says I, rides a bit bumpy.
Touche!
You like the dark? Dance with rococo?
Not too much, slightly faux cocoa.
Then I shall stay cool.
Not too Frosty, though.
The old truck, poetic bed?
Never more, quoth he.
How many styles?
How about one?
How about two?
Snail them, that’ll do.

Fire In A Bottle

Glass wands stained our wounds
a brighter-than-blood red.
But the fire of merthiolate
produced more misery
than the injury itself.
While civilian kids
were magically swabbed
with mercurochrome,
the military provided our parents
with the power of the flame thrower
in a little brown bottle,
along with instructions
on how to assure us
that germs were better killed
when thoroughly torched
with pain.

Steve Meador has been fortunate to find his work included in several journals, including: Wind, Boston Literary Magazine, Flutter, and Autumn Sky Poetry. His chapbook, A Good Sharp Knife, was released by Pudding House Publications, which will release Pack Your Bags later this year. He currently lives in the Tampa area, where he is a real estate broker.

May 2007

2007-04-28T07:01:00.000-07:00

This month: Byron D. Howell, Christopher Major, Felino Soriano and Ray Succre

Byron D. Howell

THIS POET'S MISERY

I am the
epitome
of what can be
expected
from a starving
artist.

Any cash that may have
been
on-hand,
went directly to
cover
the costs
of paper,
pens,
and postage.

The cats eat
better
than I do,
and I could
live,
if need be -
on Top Ramen
noodles
with a little
bit
of onion
and garlic
powder.

My grandmother
has officially
given up
on trying to
convince me to get
a real job.

I'm usually
very low,
if not completely
out -
of caffeine
and nicotine.

One of these
days,
the muse
is really going
to come,
and I'm going to be
forced
to snatch a catnip
mouse
right from under
a pussy's
nose
just to be
able
to congratulate
myself
with one miserable
make-shift

cigarette,

which will
probably
make me see
more messed up
things
than I could
ever

shake a stick at.

TWO DAMN GOOD REASONS - TO BLUFF

Poker face.

Nothing more,
nothing less.

A dead-pan expression.

So much
contempt
for just one set of
eyes,
slanted from
the weight.

Did he not
weep
this morning?

Is he unable
to feel?

Could his
writing
be anymore ...

sinister?

Was it rejected,
like him?

He is
the American Idol
disqualified
because of
some previous
conviction.

Sanjaya Malakar
gets away with
murder
every week
with his stupid
hair,
and his:

"Gay for the right
price ..."

attitude.

Neither
are very white.

One has
risen.

The other,
should
fall.

One killed
people.

The other,
songs.

A poker face.

As I touch
mine
while gazing in
the mirror,
I'm grateful I can
write
but not sing -
and I'm actually
proud
for the first time
in decades
to be a free law-biding
American -
one who vents
his own contempt for
Sanjaya,
while stifling
a wicked fascination
of the other.

One has already
been silenced.

The other will
be
soon enough

Today, the world
and the stage
may be theirs,
but either way ...

I'm all in.

Bryon D. Howell has been writing poetry for many years. His poetry has been published recently by The Eleventh Transmission. He also recently had a poem accepted for publication by Contemporary Rhyme. Bryon is also the editor of four online 'zines which can be found on Duotrope.com.

Christopher Major

EASTER PIECE

I didn't want to help
but they made me,
it was too heavy
for him to carry alone.
The streets were heaving,
crowds everywhere;
when we arrived
the nails and tools
were ready,
and the place soon
filled with hammering
cries and cursing.

I watched from
a safe distance,
his sweat poured agony,
contorted face finally
declaring it finished.

3 days later
there was a commotion,
we just couldn't believe it,
they must've had a screw loose -
bloody flat pack......

Christopher lives in Staffordshire England, where he's training to be a Psychiatric Nurse. His poems have appeared in many UK print mags including Pennine Platform, Outposts, Poetry Monthly, Poetry Nottingham, Sepia and online at,amongst others, Snakeskin, Zygote, A little Poetry, Poetrykit, High Horse, Haggard and Halloo, Indite Circle, Gypsy, Blue House,Undergroundvoices, Thieves Jargon and Lily.
Poetry Chap www.whiteleafpress.co.uk
christopher.major@ntlworld.com

Felino Soriano

City Tableau #1

Today winding acrobatic then in a
language of welting dying in vein withering
wind, scooped within hurrying handfuls of scraping
leftover legacies of cracking dying leaves,
myriad of ornamental speed infested men on
colorful bicycles sprint coherently
man-neglected ironically named Mission Street.
Vagabonds bend into begging silhouettes,
vagabonds whose degrees were once
nailed into fading highly veined wallpaper,
have now fallen naked inside broken
glassed, gold-leafed, gift given frames.
They have abandoned pinstriped suits,
cluttered voice assorted classrooms,
self-appointed "wise" colleagues
learning educating consciences by studying
faces of passersby, the innumerable simple smiles
by people of those once casually condemned.

City Tableau #2

The derelict
lit by old lamp post
corner house whose surroundings recall
an imagination demand depictions of
perfections regarding gardens in the vernacular
of golden flowers, silver-stemmed with leaves
curving toward shadows atop perfectly shaved ground—
house with surgically removed legs,
all prior tenants had ransacked
removing all proprietary semblances
sans scruples,
minus compassion
or ability to prophesy
man would rebuild,
in tribute to antithetical
attachment to ending
neighborhood
hostility.

City Tableau #3

A thick natural arm leaps blossoming from the
cracked, half-opened mouth of calloused concrete.
Green.
Sympathetic shadows skim the beautiful burgeon:
hovering dragonflies, sputtering magic of invisible wings
land and in a mathematical twist of flowing eruption,
vanish.

Pedestrians with open vision to outstanding blindness
are vividly ignorant of the gorgeous shadows
to their unaware eyes, marvelous desirable dragonflies
perform naked rituals, mundane to the believers
of simple circumstance, the advocates of the au courant mode,
dealing with popular culture's shadowless beings, hence they
hold heads steadily silent and remain unimpressed—
yet for the riders atop the zigzagging creatures that engage
in crossings atop turquoise backs, the city shall encompass a
landscape of longing toward variation.

Felino Soriano lives in California where he is employed as a
behavioral assistant; he is also currently studying philosophy.
Through his occupation, he is able to counsel, care for and learn from
developmentally disabled adults. Classic and avant-garde jazz are
muses. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in several online
journals including Blaze VOX, Ygdrasil, Bergen Street Review, Houston Literary Review, Persistent Mirage, among others.

Ray Succre

The Motion in Calendars

After months and still more months,
memory a rolling ball dog-pawed
across the yard, and in still more years,
the chance of it being anything
other than this dog, this ball, and this yard
becomes diminutive.

You bounce from steps, a tree, and a car,
and wait for the dog to tire,
rushed like a sowbug climbs
wet sink walls,

yet still, inert, like rubble set
between panes in a museum.

Flow of Daybreak

I arrive at work, 6:10, minutes late because I couldn't find my left shoe. I reach the front door, which has a scan-card slot. I fish for my scan-card, find it, slide it, and the door chimes, clicks. I have one second to pull the door open before it magnetically re-locks. The scan-card slot also registers the time at which I’ve arrived for work. It goes into my attendance record. I have brandyball dreams, figure divine;

and the sweet Negatron was there, Lliam,
doorman, a sentry and yes-man,
but twenty-two and a day,
and to make unhappy imps a record,
a salty rind to inherit.
The doorman saw, vanishing
as if brushed so slight by my momentum,
my ten-minute lateness, and so
charts heavily, to call it some attention.

Farewell, umber pig and spotter,
or how shall I be merry?
Strangely, there are no
happier pipers than
toggled protocols, if/then,
and singing the human in,
not quite four feet tall, just past two feet wide, and barely fitting the outdated computer and old phone, much less me, I breathe a moment. “Shape up.” I hear from the manager.

Sputtering Man

The old, mouthing man, a
confectionist,
changed one button each day,
for seven by week's end,
and threw away his shirt.

He had been boasting about
two hearts led by one mind:
he'd learned a girl, and
his sweets had more angles
than tastes rightful need.

The tail of Winter was
influenzing,
had sorted Autumn.
He and Winter had
removed their women,
put their predecessors in a case
survived by few breezes,
and set them aside.

Embarrasing.

So he formed more candies,
diligent sweets, working,
daylight into twilight,
but could he taste?
Was it pleasurable?

On the back of his life,
he crept into himself,
and worried on the number
of hellos in a day.

Ray Succre currently lives on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and baby son. He has been published in Aesthetica, Laika, and Rock Salt Plum, as well as in numerous others across as many countries. He tries hard.

April 2007

2007-03-14T12:24:00.000-07:00

Mark Rothko

Featured Poets: David Michael Wolach, Pamela Tyree Griffin, J.R. Salling and Carol Santoro

David Michael Wolach

Letter to a Peepshow Stripper

Hello, woman. It's been a long time. I'll be brief.
Between trysts I went to the ridge and saw the city at
night. If you walk along the guard rail fast enough
the lights sparkle like splinters of glass under a
lamp. The trees do this, their leaves in front of
you, the spaces between--affording glimpses. They do
not move. Overhead, invisible air planes: the
rumble, distant, murderous. And when the car flashes
up, goes by, when it blinds you suddenly--there. And
now the eyes adjust, go back to watching in the calm
darkness. I can't fix on one place. The ridge is
such that you must look at all of it, as one looks at
the past. To focus on a single lamp or neon sign is
the same as walking down the alley. Up here there is
no city, but lights, not darkness exactly, but a kind
of sea. I stood at the rail for a long time, woman.
I don't know how long, exactly. The gravel was loose
and scratched at the botoom of my shoes. My nose went
numb from the cold, and the sky: blue-black, no stars.
I didn't think of you at all. But these days my wife
paces up and down the hall, mutters to herself,
distant, quiet. When we are alone I don't know what
to do. Everything seems beyond me, woman. The war.

Paternal Eye

His father took the glass eye out,
placed it on the coffee table
next to the empty tumbler.
"To keep an eye on you while I'm away", he said.
That eye watched TV with him all day.
It looked at cartoons in the morning.
Talk shows after lunch.
Sitcoms until evening came
and the automatic lights in
the hallway went suddenly berserk.
Clap on. Clap off.
His father never really came home.
Instead he became god.
And now, after many years lost,
that glass artifice:
it probably rests at an angle from
which all sins seem perfect, necessary.

David teaches philosophy at The Evergreen State College, specializing in Wittgenstein, philosophy of language and Cultural Theory. He spent six years as a union organizer in New York where he also taught philosophy at Barnard College. He's twenty-eight years old, relatively new to sending out his own writing but has acted as an editor and publisher for several years. He currently serves as Managing Editor for Wheelhouse Magazine.

Pamela Tyree Griffin

Blind Date

Stood in the rain and I debated
To stay, to go and so I waited,
'til the day became the night
and I realized with certain fright,
that you would not come.

I gripped my hands and I stifled
thoughts that with my heart you'd trifled--
that I the calm, the undemanding
would be left in the rain standing
and you would not come.

My hair became a matted mess
and glued to me became my dress.
Powerless was I to move my feet
as water spat out from the street.
But you did not come.

Afternoon and school children passed
and when heaving, I'd seen the last,
I knew then but could not mention
the cruelty of your intention--
that you would not come.

Now the city has gone to sleep
and my own company I keep.
But I will stay and man my post
sleeping in a box at most.
Maybe then you'll come.
Then you'll come.
You'll come.
COME.

Only Two Years

Gone. Spent.
And no matter how much I try to
will it into being,
I know now that passion
is never going to return.
Once so strongly felt--it is now a withered bloom
on a gnarled vine.
This is what we have become.
This place is where 'I DO' has brought us.

Days blend into nights.
Nights blend into weeks.
Weeks blend into months
of sameness and sadness.
Endless petty disagreements now ruin my
well planned ever after.

I hide my tears; remnants of my frustration.
I walk the hall that is my heart
tethered like a heavy weight to
This place
This time
And to you.

And I wonder at the guile
that has trapped me here--
imprisoned in this place
of open windows and doors
where I can freely move yet
I cannot breathe.

I cannot breathe.

God please take me for

I

cannot

breathe.

Pamela has been writing since the age of five. Of the many types of writing she enjoys, her first and best love is poetry. Her work has been published in: Poor Mojo's Almanac(k), Chick Flicks, Long Story Short, Salome, Chaotic Dreams, Flash-Flooding and others. You may reach her at pamela_writes@lycos.com

J.R. Salling

Amoeba Man

Your barnacle encrusted eye
presses against a coke bottle
while I flagellate in a plane of sweat
away from the probing light.

You used to watch me discard
the odd pseudopod
and grow new limbs,
but the old concentration falters;
once sure fingers
slip while adjusting focus.

You hang up the lab coat
spattered in angst and fatigue
and take the footpath home
taunted by the chant of fetid streams.

J.R. Salling is an antiquarian bookdealer, specializing in the history of science and medicine, which is often reflected in his creative writings.

Carol Santoro

Purple

I shall not wear purple
not this year
nor next

I will continue to
act silly when I feel like
cry when I see commercials
about dogs in cages
laugh at myself
when I try to shoot baskets
swear at the TV
while playing video games
drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
bitch and moan
when things don't go my way
bitch and moan
when things do go my way

But one thing I will not do
is wear the color purple.

I'll hang around in lilac for a while.

Carol is originally from Chicago. She and her husband retired to Fort Wayne, IN three years ago. Working for 20 years in the mental health field, she took what was left of her sanity and ran away to where life was a little slower, a little calmer and a little more affordable. Her interests include poetry, bird photography, crocheting and whatever else life has to offer.

March 2007

2007-02-28T05:42:00.000-08:00

Some new voices this month: Michelle Reale, Branch Isole, Janet Butler and Ernest Williamson III.

Michelle Reale

Not All of Me Will Die

Whatever is familiar
Eventually falls victim
To whatever comes next

And in that way
It, too, becomes familiar
Look
I can't cry over a lost landscape again
Tears like that are for a woman with no bones

I've got no strength to leave behind
Home after home
Dilapidated shelters fit with corrugated memories
With outposts in that delicate part of my brain
That can't, won't let go.

Of course avoidance can be
An effective coping technique
But, as the similarly affected will know,
It functions solely in the short term.

Realistically, you can only avoid
Certain streets and passage ways for so long
Or else you will block out
Your entire universe which consists of only
Thirty-six square blocks anyway.

Grow a spine!
Traverse the well-graveled road.
Most importantly, don't look back.
You'll come round here again.
If not in this life, the next.

Michelle Reale is the Circulation Supervisor of a University library working on her Master's in Library Science. Her fiction and poetry has been published in Verbsap, 3711 Atlantic, Moondance, Lily, Underground Voices, Philadelphia Poets, Springfed and GreyBorders.

Branch Isole

As Easy As

Flirt if you must
to find hidden within
that which you've kept secreted
from both yourself and from him

Allow this new love
for himself to discover
that which will be shared
with yet your next new lover

Barely

In the pitch of the room
a dim light glimmers afar
at journey's end
as dream becomes real
to mind's eye
and so the trap is set

Slipping into nightmare
absent of aims and goals
future's path by default
a disquieting status quo
Until the dream collapses
drawing unto itself
all current energy and thus,
this dream implodes

Dream to nightmare shattered
with the break of day
As dawn's first light doth glow
sleeper safely awakes
and once again is gathered
back into reality's arms

Branch Isole writes of issues and emotions surrounding personal responsibility, choice and avoidance. Author of Barking Geckos and God i believe, Branch's 'voyeurism poetry' engages the reader in common life themes often experienced but not always voiced.

Janet Butler

imperfections

Gods stroll in befitting nonchalance
the shady lanes
where temperance is virtue
and agitation thought unwise
for those who thrive on adulation
admiration, emulation.

But they watch, all the same.

Quick glances search the veils of Gaia-
the airy graces that lace her fertile lands,
probing hidden sores that fester
beneath the greens and blues and browns
she wear in vaporous splendor

They watch, they judge

they name
the seeds gone bad,
the growths an infected something
of buds that wilt before the blooming
limp beneath a moon in aristocratic retreat
from sounds that fill dark skies
the jarring din
the cries that rise
and buzz tired bees
before the ponderous gates
of paradise.

The heart of it all

Sun splatters against that fine sharp line
where day cracks and night comes,
a somber, majestic, brooding power
that emanates from the heart of it all,
watching the shifting dance of galaxies
with subtle indifference.

A conjunction of perfections

and time stopped.
A trill of chirps
under a smudge of clouds
broke into a motley January day
skies blued
and thick light lay heavy
on quiet streets.

A tear in time was all it was
but a clarity filled the sweet-scented air
and I paused a moment in Eden.

Janet Butler's poetry has appeared in The Green Muse, Language and Culture, Miller's Pond, Spiky Palm, Wild Violet, Slow Trains and Flutter, just to name a few. After living in Italy for many years as an English teacher, translator and watercolorist, she transferred to the Bay Area. CA. For more on Janet, visit http://www.janetleebutler.com.

Ernest Williamson III

The Values of X

she's talking about love and chance again
like some rotary phone
skipping the appellant ring tone
amid her throbbing heartache for a lived fantasy
love making no pain no monotony of groans
all vespers now with a continent of shame of age
of opportune chances constrained by fear
of attrition
of death
so I don't listen to her anymore
that woman of my past
a vixen of variegated deceits
a kiss slow and telling one night
and a cold hint of boredom
sifting through golden songs
like Stevie Wonder's Lately
another night
yet lately
I still sing among a peace assumed
here on the corner of my trouble
somewhere between foresight
and fresh
crackling love
entitled
again
maybe
baby
this
time

A Deceptive Privilege

I never could fold my clothes very well
like a sentient male in lofty forests
awaiting mimetic prey to walk my way
and ascetically waste into me
I was lazy
but Silvia our nanny
was far from lazy
she was as a looming brush stroke
dallying along pallid stretched canvas
patient like midnight blue
but forceful
like neuronal kisses exploding
in the mind of Einstein
during inspirational moments of connectivity

so I stand here beneath my balcony
of my 34 room mansion
blue in the face and guilty
guilty of my own consciousness
in my own home
in my own laundry room
standing 5 feet behind Silvia
trying to observe and learn how to fold
to fold clothes

A Confounding Patriotism

I love the way she forgave my sins
alluding to comparable separations
in tunes by Coltrane and George Benson
she's so often in the midst of rare moments of peace
her name is legions of vaulted African equations
beautiful proofs with contrived improvisations hissing
in the weltering sweat stained in Western tents
I still love this place
it's a firm chair aware of its feeble legs
brave yet weighted with apathetic isms
like my woman
aforementioned nicely in line five
sexy true yet ignored
and not just mathematically

Ernest Williamson III is a self-taught painter and pianist who has published poetry and visual art in over ninety online and print journals. He holds a BA and an MA in English/Creative Writing from the University of Memphis and he's PhD student at Seton Hall University in the field of Higher Education. Visit his website: www.eyeoftheart.com/ErnestWilliamsonIII.

February 2007

2007-01-30T06:05:00.000-08:00

Featured this month: Graeme King from Australia, Gary Beck from New York and a new section: Editor's Poem of the Month

Graeme King

Depression

I used to howl at the moon
but when I listened just now
it was screamed obscenities
or were they addressed
to the cream-colored spade
I used to dig this black hole?

An old tree whispers in the breeze
but tells no secrets
simply hisses its sympathy
as I bow to the wind of the world
trying not to break
lest all of my beliefs
forsake me (now that I need them)
in my hour of grief.

I used to laugh with the birds
but when I listened just now
it was absurd derision
a jealousy of the freedom
to wing away from nests that bleed and fall.

A wise owl tutors from the bough
but gives no answers
merely voices an opinion
as I dance a funeral march
stepping on the shells
of eggs that hatched in the dark
as hell shows its grimace:
hieroglyphics in the bark.

Blink

I closed my eyes
for a fleeting moment
I swear I simply blinked
but when I woke
on some other planet
trees were all extinct!

I looked around
at the concrete pathways
that once led down to sea
but they were carcked
and I tripped and tumbled
people laughed at me!

I fell into
an indelible black hole
where forest once had grown
and went insane
at the frightened silence
all the birds had flown!

I tried to breathe
but had no credit card
to access open air
so wrote a poem
but a thought policeman
warned me: don't you dare!

I blinked again
and the vision faded
today came tripping by
my tears were real
as I looked around me
and watched the planet die!

Graeme is the owner, moderator and very talented contributor of KingPoets Poetry Club. He resides in Australia and you can find out more about him and his amazing talent at www.kingpoetry.com

Gary Beck

My Country

Across this once flourishing land
corporate entities despoil
the water and the air we breathe.
Masters of anonymity
until captured in wrongdoing,
then they're flayed in the media,
but exposure doesn't stop them.
Another felon replaces them,
the sacrifice to public wrath.
Brief is the public memory
and we're encouraged to forget
all ills by unctuous newscasters,
who outdo bread and circus
erasing concern with diversion
for twentyfour/seven brainwash,
until we accept anything
our economic masters do,
regardless of the consequence.
So they buy pollution credits
from less efficient polluters
in order to keep polluting
and we accept this lunacy,
as we accept other madness
with indifferent resignation.

Vast Seas

Humanity,
once again adrift
among your wreckage,
I cross stormy passages,
chartless, more fragile
than sailors of old,
whose tiny wooden hopes
made miraculous transit
on kindless seas.
O voyagers who turn back,
I know your fears.
I recognize your hazards,
but foretell your craven end,
unwilling mariners.

Gary Beck's poetry has appeared in dozens of literary magazines. His recent fiction has been published in other mags. His plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off-Broadway. He resides in New York City.

January 2007

2006-12-29T06:21:00.000-08:00

photo courtesy of Dave Rubio

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
This month features the poets Carol Santoro, Dave Rubio, Cathy Delaleu, Barbara Morgan and Siobhan MacIntyre

Carol Santoro

Six Strings

Six strings by which to lure you
place me in your supple arms
touch, caress and tease me
enamor me with charm

Reach with gentle fingers
calloused though they be
I'm your instrument of pleasure
allow our spirits to run free

Six strings by which to bind you
tied tightly round your heart
strum softly as you sit here
waiting in the dark

Sing with me of passion
release your fears and doubts
with low and sweet vibrato
share what life is all about

Six strings by which to claim you
relive your life in song
set free the hidden secrets
you've waited far too long

And when our time is over
briefly smile to them and then
place me gently in the corner
until urges call again.

Six strings shall ever chain you...

Lullaby

Sing for me a lullaby
tonight I do not sleep
sit close and whisper soft words
to fill my soul so deep.

Place your cool hand gently
upon my fevered brow
lift my saddened spirit
high up into a cloud.

And take me to Nirvana
let the angels hold my hand
we'll circle life together
a never ending band.

Tell me a sweet story
one I've never heard before
of Kings and Queens and Camelot
and all that I adore.

When sleep has finally calmed me
and demons call no more
hush out the burning candle
and gently close the door.

Carol is originally from Chicago. She and her husband retired to Fort Wayne, IN three years ago. Working for 20 years in the mental health field, she took what was left of her sanity and ran away to where life was a little slower, a little calmer and a little more affordable. Her interests include poetry, bird photography, crocheting and whatever else life has to offer.

Dave Rubio

Mountain

I wake up each morning with a giggle and a smile
Take a minute to wonder why the fuck 'The Fuck' is still going on

Then wish I didn't have to swear to get my point across

Wonder if I changed overnight and became the person
People want me to be?
Step to the mirror and all I see is me

The one that contemplates the consequences before taking action
The one that takes action without a second thought
Wondering what will come to fruition and what should be left to rot

Massaging bare feet in the carpet
After stepping on tiles so cold
No one seems to feed me
So I must wait til I'm old

Then the point comes across
To the sleep that I've lost on an imprint in my pillow
It's waiting for me to come back to thee
With the chants of a whispering willow

I sleep to awake
And awaken to sleep
Inbetween I'm part of the riddle

So each breath I take
I will never forsake
Glad to be stuck in the middle

While all that's been seen
Molded this being
Cascades from eternal fountain

Never forgot
That which I let rot
It's what helped build this mountain

Dave's writing can also be found at writerscafe.org and his photography at startlogic.com/~thehypro/

Barbara Morgan

Is It Me?

My therapist calls it 'crazy-making'
The way your words wound
And when I tell you that you hurt me
You tell me
You never said what you said
You never did what you did
That I was the one
Who turned the conversation
Took the first step
Swung the first blow

I play back the tape in my mind
Again and again
It begins with your words
I did not imagine them
It wasn't me

How many times have I wished
That I could have an actual tape-recorder
To play back your words to you
To throw them in your face
And confront you with your lies
Your manipulation
Your mind-games that you play with me

How many times have I wished
To play it back to myself
To re-affirm what I know
Instead of letting you get to me
And mess with my head
And make me wonder
Was it me?

Only you can do this to me
(Only you DO this to me)
And I will never understand why

It is what I thought love was for a very long time
(what does that say about me?)

Now I know that it is what love is in spite of
(what does that say about me?)

The Crazy One

Is it Me?

Barbara is 43 and lives in WI. She's been married for 25 years and works as the Chief Financial Officer and Accountant for a demolition company owned by her and her husband. She hopes to one day complete and publish a novel that she's had on the back burner for several years. She has two children: a daughter, 24 and a son, 17 and three dogs.

Cathy Delaleu

Trouble Fading

You left me dangling with the moon
Promised to return two centuries later
When our story will be ready
To be told with built in drama

I've folded scripts like scrolls
Into an old crate
While I waited for our sporadic affair to end
After consummation you don't seem to care

You quoted all my wrongdoings

Ignoring the domestic barricade we lovingly prepared
With our bare hands
You gave up the virtue of love
Without giving me a chance to show you
Our documentary tattered with immoral disorder
I want to see my resemblance in your eyes
To critically acclaim our memories with a Band-Aid
But how can I aid your illustration?
You left a fragile seed to grow without your touch
My little one is a scrapbook of your sperm
She tries to reach for our buried treasures
And suffers the translation of English
She wobbles her tiny feet on a cracked road
Coos like a first-grader mismanaged by family feud
I worry about our intricate love story
Can I craft your selfish heart into my journal?
I rather wait for autumn to drown out your groans
The surprising fact is that my daughter
Breathes better a capella

Cathy Delaleu was born in Brooklyn, NY, spent her early childhood in Haiti and spent fourteen years in Southern California. She now resides back in New York where she works for a life insurance company. She has read some of her poetry at various events throughout the city. Her ultimate goal is to turn her novels into scripts for movies or plays. Her poetry book, Wrapping Thoughts Beneath Emotive Rain, is being sold on Amazon and on her website: www.delaleuwritings.com

Siobhan MacIntyre

alone

reaching out; nothing there
calling for you; no answer
except the cold, forbidding silence
that envelopes me.

a sound echoes in my mind:
a whisper in the darkness of my soul.

your memory is beyond my grasp-
your features blurred, your smile vague...
do you hear my voice calling you,
crying out for you,
my screams tiny in the silence
like a whisper?

no bells peal in my world
no song plays its tune
no sounds form into words to pierce
this oppressive silence.

the solitude is overwhelming
and my hope for love has died
i lay in silent, wordless misery

alone.

Siobhan MacIntyre is a married mother of three, a financial advisor at a community college by day and a student by night. In what little time there is left in between, she writes, taking inspiration from her hometown in the Pacific Northwest.

December 2006

2006-11-28T16:17:00.000-08:00

For December, one poem each from four poets: Bill Suter, Sandy Hiss, Pete Lee and Corey Cook and some pearls of wisdom: "Forgiveness is the final form of love." Reinhold Niebuhr.

Bill Suter

Trilogy in Four Acts

Preamble

...and everything
I could have wished
was sealed up sweetly
in a kiss...

she seemed
immersed in jokes
so insular they'd
pass for x-rays

and yet this
awkward, stumbling
phrase possesses
certain larval charms

the love chant
of the blinded owl
the pure trill
of a flightless bird;

darkness
that the world
has blessed

Bill, by day, is an editor for a local newspaper; by night he writes creatively for magazines and e-zines such as this one. He's a 46-year-old film, art and literature buff whose interests also include history and psychology.

Sandy Hiss

Simply Origami

He tried to rip me apart,
Attempted to rearrange me
into his bird of paradise.
Put on display in the jungle
of bookshelves where love
gathered dust. And he tried.

His fingers rubbed pepper
red, tugging at the anger
that clung to his stubborn
whirls. His eyes burned from
the heat. But I was simply
origami, folded in the seams of

strength. A starling with
many songs to sing, flying
free on paper wings cradled
by azure skies. I would not
be molded by idle hands
with dirt beneath the nails.

Sandy Hiss' poetry has appeared in numerous online journals such as Scorched Earth, Autumn Leaves, Ken*Again, Thick With Conviction, Defenestration, Zygote in my Coffee, Words-Myth, Falling Star Magazine, and Edifice Wrecked. She resides in Wyoming with her two hyper children and Aquarian husband. She is also editor of Flutter, an online poetry magazine. Her first book of poetry, Ever Violet, by DN Publishing, will be out soon.

Pete Lee

Great-Uncle

first his stories disappeared
in my great-aunt's Baptist rage--
how she looked forward (when
he was alive) to sending them
the way of the wicked
Old West they were set in--

then, much later, his obituary
yellowed to (unreadable)
and was peeled from the album--
leaving only the hieroglyphics
of a travel piece
from the other side.

Pete Lee's poetry has recently appeared in Armada, Perigee, elimae, Right Hand Pointing, and other online literary journals. He lives with his wife in Ridgecrest, CA.

Corey Cook

- lake house -

i want to own a lake
house. a house on
an unpopulated lake,
but i've seen too many
episodes of Forensic
Files. if someone
was trying to kill me
in or outside my lake
house, no one would
hear, therefore, no one
would save me. so i guess
i'm stuck here, in
this house. this chair.
watching Forensic Files
with the shades up
so my neighbors
are able to see in.

Corey Cook lives in Contoocook, NH. His work has appeared in Children, Churches and Daddies, Down in the Dirt, Eskimo Pie, KuPoZine, Lone Stars, Red Owl and The Scribbler Ink. He works at a not-for-profit and edits The Orange Room Review with his wife Rachael.

November 2006

2006-10-31T06:26:00.000-08:00

November brings us more poetry from Michael Estabrook, and new submissions from A. Thiagarajan and Rachelle Arlin Credo. Oh, and one from me. Enjoy!

Michael Estabrook

But What Was I To Do?

I called her once at midnight from the airport,
terrible weather, snow and ice, sleet,
the cabby never showed
and none would come out now.
I couldn't get home so I called her.
I didn't want to. I paced back and forth
before the phone trying to think of another way.
She came, of course, though it took more
than an hour. While waiting I had
a glass of red wine among the empty
bar-stools and thought how
I was always so happy to see her
after being away on business.
It was always so good to get home.
She pulled up understandably agitated, upset,
and said, as I slid behind the wheel,
"I can't believe you made me come out
on a night like this."

Catharsis

Whenever I get anxious
I find myself cleaning-up,
straightening things
and making lists:
to-do lists,
writing projects lists,
lists of items I need to buy,
lists of plays and operas
and concerts I want to see,
lists, lists, and lists of lists.
I'm not certain why,
an organizing activity I suppose,
a sorting things out,
an illusion of control,
or maybe it's merely
a therapeutic scribbling,
a catharsis of sorts,
like writing poems.

Mike Estabrook lives in Acton, MA. His three children are out on their own but his wife is still there and the stupid dog and the computer and email, so he writes on, to what end he's not sure, but write on he will. He's still trying to get into the best poetry journals and hopes to publish a book of poems about his superlative wife called A Superlative Woman.

A. Thiagarajan

Friend

His son, baby-son
the anchor of the flying kite of the skies, in storms--

is growing, in minutes, and seconds
in pain (for whom?)
in knowing (whose?)

Is it the hours that matter
or the passing of the mindless
into the mindly that is minded--
son. . .becoming a friend--
that saps
the charm
of love.

untitled

he did not open his eyes
at all--
that little brother of mine
was born this morning
cried and took some milk
my mom said-
what it was that tormented him
we never knew-
he died in a few hours
without seeing me
I saw him
never leaving me
alone when I play
hide and seek with kids next door-
without further care-
no teachers, exams, nor home work
and the bloody math.

A. Thiagarajan has taught in colleges in India, and is a postgraduate in English.His work has appeard in SubtleTea, Poetic Diversity, A Little Poetry, Poetry Canada, and many others. He lives in Mumbai, India with his wife Rama; his only child, a son, Ganesh, 23, studies in the U.S. Nuances of relationship between individuals, mental pain and cruelty that we inflict on each other and ourselves are his obsession.

Rachelle Arlin Credo

Painting Love

Looking at those eyes
that consumed me whole
in a haunting dream
I never dreamt of.

Those lips
that intoxicated me
with bitter-sweet promises
only to be broken.

That body
that I ache to hold
in a communion of souls
I thought would be forever.

With the brush in my right
I'll paint my love
in colors that know no infinity.

With a bottle of whiskey in the other
I'll forget you and your infidelity
even for a while. . .

Unrequited Love

So, there you were...
a figure of resonant vibrations,
whispering hymns replete with passion,
like a phoenix heralded by the tides,
relentlessly flying through the skies.

And there I was...
a searching shadow at sundown,
a sojourner on a forlorn mound,
streamlined with fallible innocence,
yelding with resisting acquiescence.

The Cupid struck my heart...
Oh! My heart liquified with fervor,
oblivious to other people's rancor,
forbearing the torments of reality,
I was swept with a love fantasy.

A realization suddenly rocked my core,
staggering my brains out and shaking my soul,
as pang vanquishes all that's left in me,
captivating my dreams into vain reality.

Then my spirit languished
and my body, lifeless of a broken heart;
I realized your love was never mine
right from the start.

Rachelle Arlin Credo is a freelance writer and magazine columnist from the Philippines. She writes on a variety of topics for print and online publications. wwww.rachelle.co.nr

October 2006

2006-09-26T13:37:00.000-07:00

Photo Courtesy of Dave Rubio, California

Featured Poets:
Sandra Kegebein, James Keane,
Catrina Porter and Charlene Pratt

Sandra Kegebein

Paint Me

Fill your palette from the colors of my heart.
Soften my hardened hues with your tears.
Mix my heart with yours
Until you have the perfect blend.
Infuse our love till every shadow clears.

Use soft strokes to define delicate places
Only the artist's eyes are meant to see.
Streak my hair with highlights
From the ocean's morning sun.
Touch my skin with rose-blush ecstasy.

Apply each layer to stand the test of time.
Let your signature reflect a moonlit stroll.
Then, with slow and steady hand
Prime the surface
And paint me on the canvas of your soul.

Soul

Soul is said to be irrelevant,
just an immaterial entity...

how can this be
when it's the only part of man
that goes on living for eternity?

body, heart, and mind
will cease in the grave,
yet soul lives on
unscathed, immortal

it's the only part you take
when you face the ultimate exit
and cross that final portal.

the senses-five take in
all materialistic effects,
yet the integral picture it cannot set
nor contemplate the whole

without one to animate and create
the vital principle...

the one that generates
the emotions of the heart

...is Soul.

Sandra Kegebein is a reserved yet passionate poet from Southern Georgia. Though new to writing, poetry has become her passion. She also loves the romance and mystery of lighthouses, experimenting with website creation and photographing people and nature. These poems are only a mere glimpse of her talent. Please check out her other writing at writerscafe.org.

James Keane

Inevitably

with my sullen eyes rooted, love
for another bounces
blindly as an abandoned
bamboo pole harangues me,
hard against concrete. This

bamboo pole refuses
to break, refuses
even to bend or shake as it
winds up slowly
pinned against my feet. But then

this love for another, rudely
awakened, simply rolls in the end

down the road not taken,
solid as the sullen eyes
blinded as an architect’s

rooted
in concrete.

Night Knows

no excuses when, unlike the sympathetic
day, night chooses, induces a solitary
soul to look beyond itself, past the moonlit
hole it sleeps in till its emptied body
trembles, beyond the unsparing darkness of
knowledge unbidden in the moonlight of fear it
resembles. When night knows no
excuses, voices mock from everywhere
but here, taunts trailing in the road, too clear
a dream to be anything but threatening. When
night knows no excuses, you’re abandoned
in your bed, first to deafening cries
of innocence you cannot hear, then to
failure’s glee, engulfing you in truths
you cannot bear
till the hour hidden from anywhere but
here disappears with the night, dead and
bright, leaving nothing but light
excuses.

Street Corner

Behind you, adrift in snow forever
melting to a sea of gray
stars, gently a gentle wind
gathers, waving away the slush

from smirking around slinking cars to
soothe the nagging strands in the more
resolute way your violent scarf drags
down a ponderous overcoat concealing your
hands chilled to human clay, snags around

your swelling throat

until all that is breathing is nothing
that becomes you – forget the
sudden thunder that struck to

numb a dim day
with sad surprise. I remember your
mouth glittering, eyes adrift
in gray my frozen gaze could never
melt away. Even out in LA,
does the beauty of your snarled

No way
daze a sighing street corner,
mocking the ways stillness
falls forever with gray snow

James Keane resides in northern New Jersey with his wife and son and a menagerie of merry pets. Publications that have published his poems include poeticdiversity, Half Drunk Muse, Lily, Plum Ruby Review, Open Wide, Southern Ocean Review, Autumn Leaves, the print anthology "Poems Written Whilst Staring Death in the Face," and True Poet Magazine.

Catrina Porter

I Am Like A Rose (A Tanka)

I am like a rose,
Complete with thorns, yet fragile.
A beautiful face,
Lost in a crowd of many.
Timeless, but not immortal.

My Cup Of Tea

You are…
The warm water
That steeps my soul,
Brewing my heart
A deeper shade
Of love.

The heady scent
Of Vanilla Chai
Without the cream,
That silently drifts
Over the brim of
My world in transparent
Clouds of steam.

The spoon,
Stirring with ease
All my emotions.
Blending myself
With you until
We are one.

Brown Skinned Girl

Brown skinned girl,
Sweet as molasses,
Refined like sugar
Stripped from the cane.

Her feet are rooted to
The ground like watermelons,
Planted and waiting for
Mother Earth to let her go.

Her words are like
Fresh cut diamonds
From the mines of her soul,
Sparkling her full pink lips
With every utterance.

Brown skinned girl
With caramel eyes,
Hair the color of
Cinnamon on the stick.

Her mind is like the
Antebellum houses
That have stood the
Test of times, filled
With secrets and charm.

Her heart is like
Her home state of
Louisiana,
She is a steel magnolia
With the desire to let
The good times roll.

Brown skinned girl
Who is a petite
Southern belle by choice,
An African Queen by birth.

Twisted

I’m bound in knots
And bent out of shape
As you twist my words
And mold my feelings
Into a ball of confusion,
Leaving me to lie
On the ground like an
Extension cord
Unplugged and cold
Without power to
Untangle myself from
Becoming like the
Christmas lights in the
Basement where you keep
Everything you chose
not to deal with.

Catrina Porter is a 30-year-old female living in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Originally from Louisiana, she is single with no children. She enjoys writing, reading and listening to music. She has been writing poetry for nearly 20 years.

Charlene Pratt

The Blue Moon Cafe

The air wasn't saturated with smoke, drinks were in colorful glassware filled with the taste of sweet, bitter, dry and sour.

Chairs without iron, or lightly padded, but filled with spaciousness, comfort of a folder paper in a number 10 with a window view.

Lights were soft, not a darkened room, aromas of fine cuisine, service of luxury. Colorful walls with washable painted menus, changeable like a piece of clothing. Continuous seats of comfort surrounded an outer brick layer, with light splashes of color.

The line of silk, linens, cottons, colors blending, some bouncing off each other, draping bodies always out the front door with feet in stylish comfort, couples, single, a party of four, group of eight, reservations should be made for an hour and 1/2 wait no matter the time.

Pings of steel drums, violins, long strings of a cello rise and fall of the tempo, increase the inner pace of eating, conversations with a hidden quickness...slow, quick, slow.

When it rained never knew when, if it did no one was ever wet, nor believed of Florida heat, days, nights, Chicago cold, wind.

No one ever gets enough, at least once a month, surrender to yogurt lunch for a week or so, an easiness of a habit without pain. Others with papers of green a weekly scene.

This place I love only opens during the blue moon at The Blue Moon Cafe.

Exposed Flesh

The sharp blade slid across the tip of my finger, separating the skin, exposing flesh, the cut was deep.

As I watched the blood slide down my finger.

I felt the pain.
--air moving across exposed flesh.

Your words like granules of salt, seeping into exposed flesh, the throbbing, beating of my finger, mimicking the beating, pulsating of my heart.

The sting of your granules has touched my insides.

How much do I savor it, hold it, caress it, letting it envelop me, how long do I watch the blood trickle down my finger?

I place my finger against my tongue tasting the blood, your salt, holding, savoring the pain--

I looked at my not so exposed flesh,the bleeding has stopped. The throbbing, pulsating has subsided. How long did I hold onto to it, how deep was it?

The salt, your words, the wound that was in my flesh.

Charlene M. Pratt lives in southwest FL and has two published chapbooks: Notes on Thoughts (out of print) and Stir Fry Poetry. She also has a chick-lit book, Conversations with Women...thoughts you didn't want anyone to know you had. Presently she is working on serial pieces of romantica.

Her books can be found at www.lulu.com/thebookgallery, Amazon, Google and The Sand Dollar Bookstore in Venice, FL.

September 2006

2006-08-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

Unfettered Verse features five poets in this month:
Tyler Rose, Bill Suter, Taylor Graham, Rochelle Hope Mehr and Michael Estabrook
Photo courtesy of Dave Rubio

Bill Suter

Absurdistan

They taught us to curse
angels at the college
hurl varied imprecations
at the dead;
simple as a stone
might shatter glass
we knew no sylvan being
could exist. Hadn't all
the magi told us so?
How could pristine intellect
be proven wrong?

We'd prayed to fame
and seanced holy wit,
catalogues of the quoted
led us here, no mystic
could be closer
to the truth, or else
both quote and quoted
are the same.

Let me sip the nectar
of pronouncement over fact
I think I'll sleep a little better
knowing less, curled here
in a comforter of bliss
as sweet ennui melts
into the cracks.

...I could have told you
no cartel ever named
could quantify the hunger
that we claim...

So Far Away From Here

Africanus delectus;
te quiero, mi amor. What
other form of discourse
need there be? I sought
audience with self-deluded
poets whose lips shared
neither self nor poetry.

Then I saw a sliver
of dark magic, the whisper
of a slender camisole;
as moonlight bathed
the armor of Medea
in the pantheon
of wonders that she stole.

Pooled in paths of ancient
labyrinthine kingdoms, feathered
notes caressed imperial wind
till colored rain fell
from a candied heaven,
and fastened to the souls
they'd hoped to bless.

If love is not
the kiss of simple
reason, then where
is the reason
that we seek?

Bill writes obituaries for a local paper in the Youngstown, Ohio area after a second tour of duty in college. He's 46, married to an Indonesian national, and embarking on a new career in technical (though not necessarily death related) writing and editing. His muse is generally irked by politics, music, foreign film and fine art.

Tyler Rose

blizzard

i'll be your winter
reliably bleak
the snow from without your windowpane
the seasons they creep
like criminals in sin

i'll be your ice on the road
i'll keep you in

please don't malign
these wishes i keep
every day you'll be
so trapped under me

i'll be your blizzard
then i'll shovel you out
and you cannot flee because you'll see
you're caught where i want you to be

if you listen for lessons that i leave between lines
in letters of love so carefully concealed
a lie by design
and as much as i love you, inside me it feels
that my life is just a disease that you've suddenly healed

but in the maze that i've made you
where you're within just a stone's throw
here i'm destined to save you
as your crooked hero

string

a string to carry my heart upon
a sleeve that's worn for far too long

the last page torn from a towering volume
a terrified author's unread passages

a string to hang a fading photograph
an epiphone from an epitaph

a string to tie us together
and a chain to tear us apart

Tyler Rose is a 23-year-old writer & musician living in various parts of the Canadian maritimes. His greatest fears include the American government and writing short self bios. You can almost see inside his brain at http://one.fsphost.com/trose

Taylor Graham

AFTER ALL

she gets in the passenger seat anyway.
He’s at the wheel. The remnants
of a civilization lie behind them.

At a fork in the road she wants
to drift. He drives on. Asphalt
washed away in all the rainy seasons.

Flocks of birds lift from a forest
where she wishes endless plains.
A crumbling wall overgrown, creepers

and vines, a thousand square miles
consumed by jungle. Exaggerated
romance, his vision rises as the sun

sets toward ancient golden cities.
Dashboard lights make her skin glow
as if sprinkled with gold dust.

He steers between eroded banks and
gullies. They’ve known each other, he
doesn’t even say “trust me.”

A CHILD’S DRAWING

This is our meadow in early May
before the grasses turn, with a mist
below a midnight sky.
No, not a mist – a pond with splashes
of waves. Actually, an ocean
under stars on a blackboard sky
on which are written formulas
we can’t discern, a message in angelic
tongues, untranslatable.
After so many months of rain,
hillsides sloughing off, and under-
neath it all, dark soil in motion
dissolving into shades of sea, our
meadow, even now, tiding away
beyond the edges.

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the
Sierra Nevadas, who helps her husband (a retired wildlife biologist) with his field projects. Her poems have appeared in International Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Poetry International, and elsewhere. She is also included in the anthology, California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her manuscript, The Downstairs Dance Floor, is winner of this year’s Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize from Texas Review Press.
piper@innercite.com

Rochelle Hope Mehr

Some Things I'll Never Know

Why the wind rustles through the leaves
With the abandon of a gath'ring snow.

Why the ocean trembles and heaves
To a tumescent afterglow.

Why the dithering twig
Never grows a leaf –
Understanding all
And nothing at all
In its grief.

Fugue

I fade away
Light loses luster
How many lumens escape

Into lunar landscape?
What is this new shape?
I'd like to phosphoresce

Persistently at your feet
Neither borrowing nor lending light
Burgeoning no urge --

Secure from my flight.

Rochelle Hope Mehr lives in New Jersey. Her poetry has appeared in Lucidity, a little poetry, perceptions, Offerings, The Wandering Hermit Review and other publications.

Michael Estabrook

822 miles in three days

Do you think all this driving
has made me stronger,
tougher or simply more achy and sore.
I'm going fast, 60, 70, 80
miles per hour, but is that
truly necessary? Does it get you
further faster in the end?
No, of course not, but it's hard
to avoid it, getting home a mere
half-hour earlier
makes all the difference
in the world.

long stretch of emptiness

Alone on the sidewalk walking the dark streets
the wind blowing leaves through the trees
and down along the cold ground. Alone
returning to the dorm missing my girl so bad
I could cry, the future seeming so distant,
such a long stretch of emptiness,
before we would be together, before
I would have her
to myself, always. A feeling
as barren as the earth waiting
for the green of spring, cold as steel
on a winter field.

Mike Estabrook lives in Acton, MA. His three children are out on their own but his wife is still there and the stupid dog and the computer and email, so he writes on, to what end he's not sure, but write on he will. He's still trying to get into the best poetry journals and hopes to publish a book of poems about his superlative wife called A Superlative Woman.

August 2006

2006-07-13T06:56:00.000-07:00

Featured Poets:
Corey Mesler, Graeme King, Cat Cashman and Graham Burchell

Corey Mesler
Ownshook

I am not a strong man
though sometimes I play one
in the family play, Jackpot!
It’s for the kids.
Some nights, though,
backstage when it’s just me
and my greasepaint
I wonder if I exist at all. Those
are the times I act like
a god, one the world, the
old theatrical world,
has no more use for, a numb god.
It’s the role of a lifetime,
a walk-on.
It’s the role I slip around in, even
with you, even in the daylight.

Again, the Scission

I was hung like a star.

I was lonely like a wandering.

I was alive like the need for death, the ancient
hungry need.

You were such a lovely lie.

You were anxious, a thrum, a current of blood.

In the end we ended up at the beginning, the place
where you hold out a hand and expect it to be
snapped off. We never even touched. We live with
that stain. Alone we contemplate it, with our
philters and our dangerous duende.

Corey Mesler has appeared in numerous journals and reviews including the Adirondack Review, Turnrow, the Mid-American Poetry Review and Three Candles, just to name a few! Since I cannot do him justice here, please check out his website and other works at www.coreymesler.com.

Graeme King

Winter Pondering

Blue skies and butterflies
draw me outside to where
my cryogenic heart thaws
in the sunshine of your love.

The leaf section of my
sympathy orchestra
plays blues with cool affection
then plucked by the wind

gives me a ticker-tape parade
then lies like a yellow brick road
on my trail to happiness.

Bird lyrics call me fool
to think I could freeze
stalactite memories
or grow love in trees
to pick when I please.

All the while
my smile mirrors a daytime moon
as tree trunks
volunteer for diary duty
and I wear a teenager's blush.

A cheeky breeze blows prose away
and delivers fresh thoughts
of a promised summer
when we won't care
building ice cream castles
in the air...
you and I
a blue sky
and mulberry pie.

Slowly cresting the hill
stop and ponder
then wonder
where I might be
without you.

Epiphany

Epiphany came calling, I was out,
Too busy to receive my inner light;
It certainly will come again, no doubt,
Perhaps that glow will visit me tonight.

Enlightenment knocked on my door one day,
My stereo was turned up far too high;
It rapped again, then sadly walked away,
Who needs it? I’m a well-off, new-age guy.

The answers of the universe were there,
Forgiveness for the countless times I’ve sinned;
I ran past in a hurry, didn’t care,
Solutions blew away in swirling wind.

My deadlines meant I had no time to think,
Or ponder on my future here on Earth;
I climbed the ladder, had no time to blink,
A man is judged by how much he is worth.

One day will come a light not seen before,
To draw me in, and introduce my fate;
I’ll stand there, lowered head, at Heaven’s door,
I’ll know the answers – sadly, far too late.

Graeme King is a versatile and extremely talented poet/musician from Australia. Please check out his website at www.kingpoetry.com.

Cat Cashman

to know love

to know love
is to delight in all her ways
precious in darkness
and in light

...is to feel the beat
of her heart, as if it
were your own,
keeping time with
life's tides as they
ebb and flow

...is to hold a gem,
sparkling diamond shine
with hands tender
embracing her core
yet setting her free
to be her own

...is to know pain,
stark and brutal
when she leaves you
cradled in sorrow,
falling to break, open wide
like a child
again

the wind and i

i dreamed the wind
into my sails
as if she were real
fingers tumbling
through my hair,

love's open doorway
in bayview blues
and seagreen hues

nighttime's hush
carried us skyward
out to a heaven
meant for two

in sweet embrace
we lingered long

on our ship of fools

Cat finds poems, like shells left upon the shore
from waves that come and go... they are gifts from the muses..
Cat is a songwriter/musician who recently took up the banjo. She lives in Washington State with her roommate and ten very pampered cats.

Graham Burchell

Pebble

Pebble, one amongst countless, gabbling
when the salt edge turns them over, ensures
they are dressed smooth for nature’s display,
at a hem line, where a water world
meets an air world, like those special places
where a continental plate greets another,
where the bones of a skull are stitched.

My pebble is a perfect sphere, revolved:
an eye in a scaly face, urging me -
pluck it out and see similarities;
the more blue than gray – white-veined,
white smudged, but without the heart
of fire like the small marble that is earth,
lost, rolling at the hem of a universe.

Stones

They clack on strings in lines or strung like nets

upon the open sea that stretches south
from lithesome neck to swell of breast,
or sometimes hang like tears from lobes
married in air to filigree,
the stones are masks of eyes alive,
yet sound dead echoes in the bowls of ears.

They are beacons of your heart that brush
the scent and softness of your hair,
touch circles of your neck or fingers;
symbols of your place amongst the beauty
of this earth, viewed with more than magpie eye
that simply craves each bright ray ricocheted
from all the gem stones thus displayed.

Graham Burchell was born in 1950 in Canterbury, England. He is the winner of the 2005 Chapter One Promotions Open Poetry Competition, and the runner up in the 2005 'Into Africa' International Poetry Competition. His poetry has appeared in many literary magazines. He is the editor of the online poetry journal, Words-Myth. He now writes full-time from his home in Houston, Texas.

July 2006 Debut Issue

2006-06-27T06:54:00.000-07:00

For the debut issue, I am featuring Joe Arechavala, Amy Cobb, Dave Rubio and Nancy Krieg. I would like to have posted all the poems they sent me, but I felt it would take up too much space and take away from the reading of all these fine poets, so I have only posted two poems from each poet. I hope everyone enjoys reading them as much as I have.

Joseph Arechavala

Six Seconds in an Otherwise Tedious Day

Glistening black waterfall;
Shiny locks cascade forward
As she looks down.
Bronze skin glows pink,
Long lashes butterfly-flutter.
Embarrassed smile
Reveals true beauty.

And for one moment,
She is glorious.

For...

Sex drips like wet steamy sweat
Dripping into a puddle of desire
Hands long to stroke sizzling flesh
Murmurs of kisses, lips touching skin
Breathless gasps of pleasure
Caught up in her throat as
Her lover transcends her body
To caress her soul

Pose

Exquisite African goddess
pauses in mid-stride
bronzed pose of grace
hands positioned just...so
tiptoe ballerina in jeans
then continues walking
the moment past

Joseph Arechavala works as a Supply Chain Procurement Analyst, is a part-time student, proud father of two boys and a writer that should be read.

Amy Cobb

Autumn Arrives

a calming friend
after a period of hot anger
the wind caresses you
tells you all will be alright
invites you to sleep
beneath warm quilts
and dream in the colors
of the vibrant pajamas the trees don
as they ready themselves for bed
and you decide to slumber too
hoping to awaken with the daffodils

A Dust That Lingers

he got a sadistic joy
knowing that the dust
that caused her misery
was at least partially composed
from his own skin
he covered everything
in a layer of ugliness
and fed the mites
that made her sneeze
in that way, he knew
that although she'd evicted him
from her life and her bed
he'd hide in corners and ducts
and he hoped to cling inside her nose
as she drew her last breath

Amy Cobb is a native of Greenwood, SC. Her work has been published in The Binnacle, Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry, The Rectangle, and The Lander University Review. Her life is standard fare, so she seeks to make her life a little less dull through her writing.

Dave Rubio

Half as Much

Let's go outside
I want to watch the breeze
Blow through your hair

She says

I want to see if it looks the same
as when I run my fingers through them

Although I know it looks different, I want to see
How nature embraces you with its longing kisses

Does it love you half as much as I do?

Just let me see
If you do to the world
What you do to me

Sun/Dawn/Dusk/Moon

I looked at the sun
And it pissed on me
But no matter how much water, beer
Or other liquid I drank

I just couldnt piss back as much as it did

So I looked to the moonlight to cleanse me from my fright

But the moon is a character of selfishness
Always wanting to be looked at
Though never wanting to see

Twilight and dusk wouldnt be my friend
Complaining about having to be the middle
Of the beginning and the end

"Queso!"

I shouted out to them.

Offered them some cheese in order to gain a new friend

All said they have had that cheese before
And they reluctantly shined upon my door
None of them wanted what I offered
Anymore

The moon was so repulsed that it would take a week or so off
The sun was so inflamed
It made it its purpose to burn down my name
The dusk and dawn didnt care
They knew that whatever the sun and moon did
They were forever forced to be there

Sitting on the porch wondering who would take me first
Momma called from the kitchen and said:
"My son...stop your bitchen!
The sun and moon wish that they were you!
Hoping to be able
To make a life
From mimmicing you.

My son, please guide the sun
My son, please caress the moon
My son, please forget their hopes
Of wanting to be you.

Save them through your steps
Upon their hourly reps
Dont let your daily excersise
Be a prelude to their demise."

Vanished now are those words
The sprouting of the sun and moon
In an instances' blink
Is as confused as a summers rain

The sun rose
The moon set
Yet the dusk and the dawn
Remained the same

"Mother PLEASE!"
He screamed to the wind
"Help me understand
Before you go...show me who to believe!"

All he saw was the dusk and the dawn
No answer from them, for they have always been silent
He wished for an answer from the sun or the moon
But since silence was all he heard from the dusk and dawn
He considered nothing more from the sun
Or the moon

It was real...as she had said
The sun turned to the moon
The dusk turned to to dawn
And in their daily revolvement
They showered him with
His song

Bathed upon that shower
Of sun and moons persistence
What was brought to him was only
The subtle hints of his

... deliverance.

Dave Rubio lives in the Northern California foothills. He says he's 33, works in his own land surveying company and writes good stuff occasionally. I believe him!

Nancy Krieg

adventures of a wooden indian

remember.
fingers of lightning
cracked the rain open.
that day, half asleep
my map blurred, the rainbow
eluded me. In that moment
I already existed. all of
us are agents, you can't stop love.
the ink dried on the pages
before I could save any more ideas.

believe.
the man selling words
smiled and sold out last week.
he is mute by choice
still sits in his booth
shakes hands with people
who give him money
they appreciate
his candor.

honor.
we could be a myth of children
come to gaze in honest eyes
an arc of pleasure
moving between hearts
where silence of the mind
and presence of reverence
bears a beauty
beyond human description.

I imagine you

as the apex
of opaque, bright clouds blown
in azure skies silvered blue
gold coins your father gathered
aligned behind your goddess hair
trace light as they fall to earth
and treasure more
than siren songs
worthy mates have
garnered from pirate stores.

perhaps
we are the epitome of madness
but the feeling
stays and glows
and it's real.

beyond the gates
statues lost in verdant moss
like sacrosanct visions in clay
their form is pure
and hardened art,
true hearts learn to to give
the leary wake but once..

and once
their death decides..
wishes
and kings made of them
follies bleak
without eyes that see
the world with love.

Nancy Krieg often pulls down the stars for examination and shares what she finds in the metaphysical realm. She is recently published in Ancient Heart and Artistry of Life. She lives and works in Kansas City as a social worker, musician and poet (not necessarily in that order!)