Tom Montag is most recently the author of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013. He is a contributing editor at Verse-Virtual. In 2015 he was the featured poet at Atticus Review (April) and Contemporary American Voices(August) and at year's end received Pushcart Prize nominations from Provo Canyon Review and Blue Heron Review. Other poems will be found atHamilton Stone Review, The Homestead Review, Little Patuxent Review, Mud Season Review, Poetry Quarterly, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere. I SPEAK of sky, blue or grey, of light and darkness, the trees. I speak of love, perhaps too much. The world is what the world is and my heart is not, by half, enough. ______________________ WHERE YOU STAND In wind this time. There, shelter. Sun or shadow or the green sweep of field. The woods. We know nothing for certain. Here would be silence. Somewhere the song of the cricket, so far away you can't hear it. Where you stand makes the difference. ______________________ LIGHT WRITES its lines in the bark of trees. The wind sings. This morning you know I know nothing. ______________________ AT EVENING Some small sweet motion she makes. She does not know she is the beginning and the end of the day. Where she goes, she takes the light with her; she wears it like flesh. Or her flesh is the light, and tonight's stillness her silence. ______________________ THIS ELECTION CYCLE How simple we must seem to those creatures out at the edge of our crystal- ball universe who are watching us. By simple I mean blind and greedy and stupid, I suppose. From where they are to where we are, distance isn't measured only in light- years, but also in terms of the word they use for neighborliness, or lack thereof. "No," they say, "they aren't ready to join us, and from what we can see, they may never be."
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Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. He is a Canadian and USA citizen. Today he is a poet, editor, publisher, freelance writer, amateur photographer, small business owner in Itasca, Illinois. He has been published in more than 895 small press magazines in 27 countries, and he edits 10 poetry sites. Author's website http://poetryman.mysite.com/. Michael is the author of The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom (136 page book) ISBN: 978-0-595-46091-5, several chapbooks of poetry, including From Which Place the Morning Rises and Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems. He also has over 91 poetry videos on YouTube as of 2015: https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos Michael Lee Johnson, Itasca, IL. nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards for poetry 2015. Visit his Facebook Poetry Group and join https://www.facebook.com/groups/807679459328998/ He is also the chief editor/publisher of anthology, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1530456762 https://www.createspace.com/6126977 Iranian Poetry Lady (V2) The first time I saw your face, cosmetic images, dust, dirt, determination fell across your exiled face. Coal smoke lifted with your simple words and short poems. Your meaning drawn across a black board of past, rainbows, future fragment, still in the shadows. Muhammad, Jesus twins, only one forms a hallo alone. One screams love, drips candle wax, lights life, shakes, love. I encrust your history in the Ginkgo tree, deliverance. I wrap in the branches the whispers in your ears a new beginning. I am the landscape of your future walk soft peddle on green grass. I will take you there. I am your poet, your lead, clouds move over then on. I review no spelling, grammar errors; I lick your envelope, finish, stamp place on. Down with age I may go, but I offer this set of wings I purchased at a thrift store. I release you in south wind, storms, and warm in spring, monarch butterflies. Your name scribbles in gold script. Night, mysteries, follow handle, your own. Harvest Time (V8) A Métis lady, drunk- hands folded, blanketed as in prayer over a large brown fruit basket naked of fruit, no vine, no vineyard inside-approaches the Edmonton, Alberta adoption agency. There are only spirit gods inside her empty purse. Inside the basket, an infant, restrained from life, with a fruity winesap apple wedged like a teaspoon of autumn sun inside its mouth. A shallow pool of tears mounts in his native baby blue eyes. Snuffling, the mother offers a slim smile, turns away. She slithers voyeuristically through near slum streets and alleyways, looking for drinking buddies to share a hefty pint of applejack wine. Cheaters (V3) I am tired of cheaters online, weary eyed crossword players complicated chest moves drift dancers, lies, laid soft peddle, shared pillow, dark closet dreamers. Campaign gossip whispers, infidelity, sex objects shoved up orifices in open or private places. Sex shops open late, consummation nightclubs, cities dark corners. Two doctrines of selfishness you should know about penises and affairs most are short. Flesh and fights, scabs, cheaters in the night. One-Legged Goose You see me in the parking lot hobbling, avoiding cars. I am that one-legged Canadian goose guest of the wild. You toss me a handful of mixed birdfeed. I am your morning wing flapper picking up leftovers by sparrows brown wing doves, yet grateful for charity. I learn to survive dipped in red resister North then South traveler, lifelong, mute to borders, I cross the line. I thank you poet, bouquet, crossword flowers gusty winds mix carnations. Cheap, reasonable costs in depth, death, within religions, tones of god Zeus, one space to Mary wept. Those cheap carnations at the foot of the cross. One-legged goose singled out. Flight of the Eagle From the dawn, dusty skies comes the time when the eagle flies- without thought, without aid of wind, like a kite detached without string, the eagle in flight leaves no traces, no trails, no roadways- never a feather drops out of the sky. Max Heinegg's poems will appear this year in Chiron Review, Structo, Stone Canoe, and The Machinery. He recently won the 2016 Emily Stauffer poetry prize from Apogee magazine. As a musician, his last four solo cds are on ITunes and Spotify, and can be heard at www.maxheinegg.com He lives with his wife and two daughters in Medford, MA, where he also teaches high school English. Backyarding In my unkept yard, I chart the feral return of all things: the oak leaning until off-balance, the dandelions & clover joining the columbine & bee-balm, the raspberries climbing over the blackberries, sweet & invasive. On the weathered deck, the paint splits & the cicada can be caught mid-molt, shelling while the giant spider waits, thumb-size, the color of dirt. He’ll stay down in the brambles; I’ll stand by the broken grill, the propane connector fused to the hose when the fire caught. Disuse becomes the canvas for new growth, soil-thoughts & the small paradox: my mind is cleaner when my hands are dirty. Too bitter for jelly, I start on the concord vines with a chef’s knife, playing at suburban dementia. I hack a swath, send the tart grapes reeling on the dry tentacles, falling backward towards the driveway. A passing guilt as I drag them to the compost for the invisible feast, a farmer’s alchemy as the limbs that rose above the line of sight into Elizabeth’s yard now sink into the steam, beneath my pitchfork, the lovely blackening, the soft fists of sod. The grapes will break & the sugars refine, both wine for the earth & breath for the aether. Eating for the belly My love is in Flaming Gorge, Wyoming. Near the bigamists, she sends loyalty across the line as I hear the horse carts sound. She says, I miss your belly I hope you haven’t lost him My spartan regimen wasted, the woman again, misinterpreted. With only nine days until she hitches a Washington plane, I am losing all balance beneath the deluge of foreign & domestic ales, stouts & porters, rotating plates of cheeses, salumi, olives until I regain the fleshy ellipse, worthy of her admiration. For the belly is a pet to be walked in private. Left Standing Why did I ever assume I was hollowed out for the wind to sing through? The wind needs neither instrument nor harmony. If I had chosen to crawl I could have come to calmness sooner but there was time so I fed awhile on salvages & waited on my instincts. They never came. I had only learned what I could not remember, so I waited, a passenger assuming later trains. Sotto Voce For Alan Rickman If you are unsatisfied with the player you are paired with, a ham across from the table, slurping his wine, or brandishing his American gun, or if your ego chafed at misunderstanding, when really it was a child hearing you as you wanted to be heard, memory taking soul’s dictation, you might delight in a judgment none can censure, spiking their joy’s drink sotto voce, Stamping dislike on what fate assured you was the way it had to be. I always smiled when you sneered, as facetious as the dark, your disdainful smile arching itself back to dignity. Some Souls Some souls are switches, stay flicked until the bulb burns out, dark until choice jars inertia from a line of no velocity. Some stay closed like mason jars but a spoon will do the trick, and then we’re eating, pickled beets, red onions from your mom’s garden. Some are flight, reptilian brain, skittish pulses shatter shadows. To pry free? Surety, friendship, days of consistent sun. Some are forests, high branched stoicisms, reminding autumn that love’s a leafy costume that the winter will remove. Ngozi Olivia Osuoha is a young Nigerian poet/ writer and a graduate of Estate Management. She has some experience in banking and broadcasting. She has published some works abroad in some foreign magazines in Ghana, Liberia, India and Canada, among others. She enjoys writing. THE DEVOURING SHEPHERD Hunting men Killing women Butchering children, Belittling mankind Desecrating humanity Preserving cattle Dignifying livestock Grazing in residential area. Maiming men Wasting women Crushing children, Melting mankind Hijacking humanity Choking the earth Suffocating the world. Band of wolves Legion of lions Cluster of tigers Grazing in farm land. The devouring shepherd Roasting men for his beast Idolizing his cattle Immortalizing his livestock A bloody missionary Hunting human Safeguarding animals Awkward shepherd Satanic shepherd. RAPE A DESECRATING MONSTER Poor child hawking on the street Helpless girl sleeping in shanty, Harmless lady working late Unarmed woman walking home, Rape; a debasing masquerade. In jail or in school Victim or victor, Arrested or detained In lonely track or busy road, Rape; a devouring vulture. Attacked or robbed Empowered or overpowered Targeted or outsmarted Ambushed or waylaid, Rape, a dehumanizing beast. Lured or enticed Seduced or used, Lusting or loving Hated or hatred, Rape; a demonizing scorpion. Under the tree, by the slum In the desert, by the stream Bet, game, set up or revenge Forbid battery, forbid rape Rape; a defiling demon. Once raped, always remembered Once molested, always bitter Once violated, always aggressive Once humiliated, always irritated, Rape; a discouraging spirit. SACRED OR NOT....RAPE NOT |
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