Cut Short |
Shraddhanvita hails from Pune, India and holds a Master's degree in English Literature. She's an avid reader of Kafka and Sarte and her works have been published in a number of international journals like Plum Tree Tavern, Spillwords Press, Madras Courier and selected for the international anthology "Smitten". |
The Myth of Sisyphus
inside my cerebral hemispheres
Waiting for Godot
I chose the absurd
I walked on heels
risking sciatica
put hot red lipstick
on chapped lips
I talked politics, ethics, Carpe Diem
the conundrums of modern Sphinx
“Food! Sex! Weed!”
I clamored with the crowd
I mocked--
At overtimes and layoffs,
hearts growing heavier than Osmium
over twenty-one grams of soul
Outwitted--
Every Order
Every Meaning
Every System
Every Reason
I died with a glass of Vallone
and a heap of cigarettes
Reborn--
to push another boulder up the mountain
a Myth of Sisyphus.
The Trail to You
It passes through the fences
of traditions and customs
and meets the shattered
tombs of the rebels.
It passes through the walls
of speculations and considerations
and discovers the ruins
of logic and reason.
It passes through the doors
of darkness and despair
to find the windows
to wisdom closed.
Remember?
The trail to you is a lone trail,
conquering the ignorance of moments,
only to see
the epiphany of life
dead.
An Abandoned House
No Bougainville entwined to grow
Stories of wrinkled faces dead
Sign of no soothing hand over head
Broken skulls of dolls to play
Silence took over the noise all day
Strings of guitar crushed and abused
Pieces of canvas once misused
The house so old is getting sold
Leaving behind the memories gold.
stranger
Peaks through the window pain,
As a dream I’ve dreamt a thousand times
Creeps back into my brain.
And in my dream I’m not myself
But who I long to be,
And in the darkness I embrace
His false identity.
But dreams are things, I soon recall
When morning breaks my sleep,
Like humming birds and promises –
To hold and not to keep.
whiskey
(The past is looking grim)
When you’ve burned all of your bridges
You learn quickly how to swim
blackout
Or exactly what I said.
I don’t know where I left my keys
Or who’s lying in my bed.
I don’t remember calling you
To say just how I feel.
I can’t quite tell the difference
Between what’s imagined and what’s real.
I don’t remember walking home,
I don’t know where I’m from.
I don’t know how I got here
Or the reason that I’ve come.
I don’t remember how to end a poem...
inventory
Than I’ve slept with,
And I’ve slept with more people
Than I’ve loved,
And I’ve loved far more people
Than I’ve been in love with,
Because I’ve only ever been
In love with you.
the dawn
As I melt into your bed.
“I can see your naked soul.”
Says your voice inside my head.
You dissect me like a scalpel blade,
Your lips are anesthetic.
Suddenly, this brittle heart
Is oddly energetic.
You deconstruct my conciseness,
Unravel every thread.
“I’ll meet you on the astral plane.”
Says your voice inside my head.
So, I chase you into outer space
Past Jupiter and Mars.
Your eyes are burning meteors,
(Or are they falling stars?)
Then, through the prism I emerge
A morning shade of red.
“Let’s do this again some time.”
Says your voice inside my head.
If you think about it, we live in a narrow minded world
There is no God,
There is no Jesus,
Too much money is spent on the military,
And law enforcement,
No universal healthcare,
People like wars,
And destruction,
Decent people get stepped on,
Yet, nothing seems to change,
Our world is narrow minded,
Change is hard for people,
Even the gays still can't join the military easily,
People want good in the world,
Yet, it is in very small quantities,
Believe what you want,
I hate the military and law enforcement,
But we need them,
Humans behave as they do because of evolution,
And one cannot control the weather,
Think about what I have said here,
Take care,
And again, carpe diem.
Religion is a form of mind control
Mind control at its finest,
There is no thinking,
We are not robots,
We live in an evil world,
I hate destruction,
Religion is lies and fiction,
Storytelling as well,
If religion was true,
There would be no military or law enforcement,
Take care,
Carpe diem.
Decomposed Motherhood
I told them,
I want to travel the world.
But they would not.
My children buried my ashes
in the ground,
below the tree in the backyard
where I dreamed of being free.
Synthesized with the oak,
unyielding foliage suffocates,
as I strain towards the open sky,
longing to burst through and
kiss the clouds,
ride the wind to the farthest reaches.
Trapped inside these branches
when death
should have been my release,
forced to shelter them still.
Love in Rehab
because every rock bottom has a trap door.
I know it’s true,
he told me.
But every time I go back,
he’s never there.
Maybe he did better.
Maybe he did worse.
I squint in the sunshine and watch the door.
Coastal Cadence
to move beyond
the urban rhythm of life
find a smoother pulse.
Waves rush in and cool weary feet
tickling toes with bubbles and sand
easing minds into a pattern
emptying ricochet thoughts
with a shoreline ebb and flow.
Sun-warmed skin and salty lips
hair dancing in the breeze
eyes diverted from mundane daily urgency to
focus on the far horizon where
azure sky kisses an aquamarine ocean as
coastal cadence restores inner harmony.
Susan Sanders poems have appeared in Green Mountains Review, Falling Star Magazine, Common Ground Review, The Vermont Literary Review, The Lucid Stone, Soapbox, Ariel Chart and several others. With a lake to her east and the Canadian border to the north, she spends her time walking, biking and enjoying Vermont's rural beauty. She teaches creative writing classes for the Northern Vermont University and ESL for NEKLS, Inc. |
Cycles
banana colored pajamas,
running after dinner on
the hard wood floor, trying
to even the score by
sliding in socks until, I
smacked my forehead
into the coffee table.
Five stiches later, my father
kicked the shit out of the
hard oak as if it were alive.
He fire stormed up and down
the stairs and never swore on
Sundays. But after church,
he turned his hard hands on
my brother and I taking turns
to see who would cry first.
And now there’s my fiancé
dragging me up drunk from
the bed, telling me to look
to look hard at his shiny car
look, at that white pearl girl.
And then he twists both of my
arms, squints and smiles but
all I see are my father’s teeth.
On the Border
A map with the route gone south.
A granite fish with an open mouth.
Fractured light lifts the body out.
Hard eyes of onyx, gleamed.
Seven sisters ride high in the sky.
A chance collision course, fell off course.
A knotted-up stomach full of rhymes.
Pellets sparked behind stove glass.
The heart skipped a beat too soon.
The sun shined its brilliance
threading a sea of cotton clouds.
There’s power in each lonely hour.
A long distance, lost existence
of space and love’s bad time.
Obedience
had one look that was
worse than his hard hand.
Those stony eyes could
stop my train of thought
because his mad voice
was stronger than any
fast smack could hurt.
Years later, there were
new ways to stay invisible
when dinner had burned or
the new baby would not
stop crying and I took both
kids and hid behind the
door before their father had
the chance to take
his hard day
out on us.
Gathering
if yesterday walks into us
in the middle of a debate
to turn men going crazy
into elders suddenly wise.
Our foundations of the past
were set on trials that made
no champion of a first-time hunter.
Risk made the failure better with time,
so when next the mocked hunter
returns with a giant kill
much is spoken to venerate his skill.
These words I lift to the sky by speaking aloud
since I brought no drinks but knowledge
to show my generosity in kind.
Metaphor for the Generation
Or with a flash from your cameras.
There’s insanity that’s unforgivable
In the act of violence,
The celebration of stupidity that
Makes the dimwit a hero.
Sit before a laptop, and
Surf the web for Sambisa Forest
And you’ll find the mating of acrimony.
Troubled souls stealing freedom from others
To glorify misfortune in history’s books.
Boko Haram they’re called,
But the sage knows they’re far from rams
Offered as ambrosia for their beliefs.
The killing of the innocent
To atone for the wages of ambition.
Telling it like it is
Achievement, I am trying to
Tell my failures
To move out of the way
So I can teach my tongue
How to belong to an endless song.
New Direction
but must reinforce our resolve
with the assurance of experienced messengers.--Tanure Ojaide, "Home Song II"
The minstrel strolls past the laughing gang
mocking the ousted ruler mourning the lost
election only he feels had betrayed his surreal
reign as king. After all, every life of expectancy
depends on a sort of state of tranquility threatening
storms to share in the mandate of sanity that assures
the beaten of respect in the circle of contestants with
trembling hearts and faces that reveal what the
present has refused to hide for fear of retribution.
But the flowers of the home ground are indiscrimi-
nate when in bloom and uncaring in projecting the
suffering many in silence who defy with tongues heavy
from interpreting wrongs as visible as night's glows.
It will be a spectacle of callousness to say a ruler is
deserving of a second chance after his dance in a
forest of ghosts leaves him short of one arm; but
who knows what devil he trampled upon to deserve
the standing ovation of a loser too good to accept
his days are gone!
Bonnie Stanard draws on her rural upbringing and an interest in history to write novels, short stories, and poems with credits in publications such as The American Journal of Poetry, Wisconsin Review, Harpur Palate, and The South Carolina Review. She has published six historical fiction novels and a children’s book. She lives in South Carolina. See photo attached below. |
THE MIDDLE OF AGES
if clouds travel from a nearby reactor
and rain on our grain.
They say we drink uranium,
but it’s measured for security
though a threshold
for the decay of neutrons
is given in unknown numbers.
They say the apple I ate for lunch
has gentrified genetics
with dual potentials
and besides that the byproduct
of bug spray is exterminating
us to extinction.
Off the map, somewhere other than here,
reports arise that risk surpasses negligible.
Right above us, the atmosphere’s bleary
with cratered possibilities
that worry our ecosystem
and they say it
causes unstable DNA.
How much is not enough to understand?
When to begin and where to look?
They say even our dead
are damaging the dirt.
FIG TREE
rifled by wind
hissed by snow
crackled by ice
and in good time
seized by the sun.
Its three trunks puncture
the earth with stabs
of root that drill underground
for provisions
for to hoist branches
and billow leaves.
Spiny balls utter forth,
glare at sunlight,
and get especially fat
as tiny flowers erupt
inside each belly
and eventually attract
wasps that crave
its cave of flowers.
They draw in their wings
and squeeze themselves inside
where they die of their desire.
Through days of light and rain
the figs turn turkey brown
and old in the stem
and fall from the limbs,
reel to the grass, and lie there
with not so much as a shiver.
Ants riddle their skins
and release what remains
of the belly and the wasp.
The juice fades into dirt,
sweet, sticky, buzzing with bees.
CARBON COPY
did an indestructible widget wedge
into a chromosome of my ancestor?
Did it begin with the first Eve?
Does it launch at every umbilical
moment of separation
and grapple with our glut of gods?
Did my mother inherit
from untold mothers
the obsession to see
the beginning,
the black eye
of our universe?
Did the silence of a setting sun
or the loneliness of a dying night
embed in her a permanent
longing not satisfied by life?
Did she aspire to connect
to a saltless kingdom
where time only passes
with her permission?
Did she lie in beds
below the reach of moonlight?
Did she wash her hands
with religious oils only
to be rejected?
With no record,
no Holy Writ on Eve’s odyssey,
how will my mothers
rid their bones of coal dust?
How will I breathe for them
if the past is immutable?
If tomorrow is infinite?
A NATURAL DECEIT
with the sky. I thought
I had inborn clouds,
whether restless or calm.
I had in my blood
rain and sunshine.
I felt myself a part
of the natural world
of trees and shrubs,
my leaves fickle
my roots thorny.
Congenital weeds
such as crabgrass and spurge
gave me courage
and a gristly nature.
“You love me, I know you love me!”
I said when winds kindled my cheeks
and grasses flirted with my toes.
When I was young
I wandered about fields
my father plowed and planted,
where oaks and pines printed borders.
I took as favor the plash of rain,
the ticking of crickets,
the chomping of grasshoppers.
“You love me, I know you love me!”
I said to kudzu that sprouted
on the fence post.
In time I grew to understand
that kudzu grows gangly roots
that strangle fields.
SHALLOW AS A PEACH
roll it over
to the ripe side
and take a bite.
The juice runs
through your fingers
down your arm
and dribbles from your elbow.
Its violated flesh
is plush against your tongue
and you tremble
for another taste
and gush into
another bite.
Nectar smacks your lips
with tang
and wakes up peaks
in your throat.
Its luscious scent
seduces your nose,
you suck the corners of your mouth
and lick at drops on your chin.
You sit and eat
and kiss your sticky fingers,
so juicy.
Tom Squitieri is a three-time winner each of the Overseas Press Club and White House Correspondents’ Association awards for his work as a war correspondent. He reported from all seven continents, always writing as a voice for the voiceless, and has taken his love of storytelling to poetry, to transport readers to a dreamy universe and liberating them with a potion to happiness. He writes most of his poetry while parallel parking or walking his dogs, Topsie and Batman. His work has appeared in Ariel Chart, The Raven’s Perch, No Strings Attached, the Shanghai Review, Eskimo Pie, The Literary Word, Style Sonata and The Griffin’s Inkpot. |
Before More
Ways, to compensate
When you are not here
Thinking and then letting
Nature take its course
Yes, the morning is as
Lovely as always And nothing is wrong
With that
That alone, it is blessed.
This is much more.
Before the noise of the artificial world intrudes
The morning after the wash of rain
All clean, all perfect
As are the thoughts
Perhaps clear ones desired, certainly
But perfect ones, for certain
Curtains raise
Smiles are teased by thoughts
Refreshing reminders of a simple pure morning
being
Simply special
Sweeten with desire
More and more
To raise the hope
You will appear by magic
And make this gift of time
Of uninterrupted beauty
More so wonderful
He met Richard Garrigus, a bird photographer and artist, a few years ago, and started writing poems to Richard's photos. John puts Richard’s photo and his own poetic text on the same page, as one unit, thus setting up a kind of conversation between the two forms.
Here, Like Cracked Mirrors,
in pieces.
The marsh glows
with its own light,
and every hungry bird,
vigorous green plant,
and rotting log,
reveals itself
in what’s happening,
bare
and vulnerable.
I didn’t know the world
could be so intimate.
I didn’t know I could.
Photo by Richard Garrigus. Text by John Skeen.
The Long View
even birds need
their feathers to grow out first,
before they can learn to fly.
Could we imagine ourselves
so in agreement with the world,
that we actually become
what the world imagines of us?
And once fledged,
who could we be then?
Photo by Richard Garrigus. Text by John Skeen.
Seeing Is Believing
we’re definitely seeing each other.
What's not to believe?
But the facts of the world come from a dream:
that there will be life in the spaces,
that water and trees and birds will appear,
that Icarus will survive the solar fire
and leave his footprints on the moon.
Believing is seeing already,
or we are blind indeed.
Photo by Richard Garrigus. Text by John Skeen.
From the First Light of the World,
the ebb and flood of gray tides.
In their holy presence,
I remember
to breathe with them as they breathe,
and move in the grace
of their movement through a lowering mist,
the whole earth weeping,
and then they’re gone.
Photo by Richard Garrigus. Text by John Skeen.
And He Keeps Watch,
comes, he flies ahead
like spirit-light,
and he sees clearly
in the dark,
which I cannot,
and I follow.
Photo by Richard Garrigus. Text by John Skeen.
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ANDREW BROADOUS
ANDY BOTTERILL
AQSA MUSTAFA
AVE JEANNE VENTRESCA
BOBBY Z
BOB FERN
BONNIE STANARD
BRIAN RIHLMANN
DAVID HANIGAN JACOBS
DIKE OKORO
FOTOULA REYNOLDS
GARY BECK
ILYA GUTNER
IVY MONTE
JAMES CROAL JACKSON
JOAN E. CASHIN
JOHN SKEEN & RICHARD GARRIGUS
KAREN ARNOLD
KEITH BURKHOLDER
KIRK BUECKERT
LINDA BARRETT
MANISHA MANHAS
MARK FTZPATRICK
MISHAL IMAAN SYED
NANCY JASKO
NGOZI OLIVIA OSUOHA
NORMAN KLEIN
PATRICIA BRAY
RACHEL MEDINA
ROSE AIELLO MORALES
ROUNAK CHAKRABORTY
SAHAJ SABHARWAL
SALLY WILDER DAVID
SANTOSH KUMAR POKHREL
SHRADDHANVITA
SOPHIE MCMILLAN
STEVE FRAGALE
SUSAN SANDERS
THOMAS M. MCDADE
TOM SQUITIERI
WOODY FRAN