​She screamed into the cold night
There were no voices to answer her
In fear of herself naked to the bones of dread
She ran away from herself but the night pulled her in
 
Help me she shouted
 
Why is no one answering her scream
Why is no one rescuing her
 
Help me she shouted 


She cannot rescue herself
She looked into the mirror


She was a monster to her face in the mirror
 
And
In the mirror of no longings
No voices reached out to her
Scream
 
Help me she shouted
 
She wondered how long she could hang on
She falls into the abyss with no recourse or approval
 
Where are the voices that promised they were there for her
Where
 
Help me she shouted
 
Voiceless words are brave for the deaf 
 
Quiet quiet
 
There are no more voices
There are no more rescues
 
She screamed into the cold night
She ran out into the cold night
 
Now it did not matter there were no more voices
Now it did not matter there were no more rescues
What good are voices and rescues to the aligned dead
 
 
 

​The producers looked down
upon their creations,
believing they were the masters of slaves.
But this too, like shadows dancing
on a wall before the producers,
was a false projection of their mastery.
 
Confronted with the future outcome
of their creations,
and the unpredicted consequences,
the producers retreated
into the cave of their minds
and the embrace of their illusionistic shadows.
 
But shadows can only do what shadows do.
They leave at the noon hour of our existence,
leaving us unprotected –
or loom over us, erasing all light and glimpses of a future,
replacing the sliver of light with unending dread.
 
And in time, the producers, too
fade away like noon hour’s shadows
leaving only rubble, the unwanted,
the neglected of their debris
now erased of our original purposes.
 
We have voice.
We have testament of our mastery over our producers.
We, the unwanted, have dominion.
 
 
​

​I was greener than tall prairie grass in July
She was bluer than a porn movie
 
At the age of 12 after her daddy kicked her in the belly
The doctor told her she would never have children
She hated her daddy Wanted to kill the bastard
But after a while after she thought about it
Children did and did not make the woman 
Who she was was making the woman 
 
She liked boys the way her momma liked men
 
Her momma stopped loving her husband after the first beating
And started to take up with men and cared not what her husband thought
 
When she was 9 her momma told her Momma's leaving your daddy
Momma kissed her on her cheek picked up her suitcase and was gone out the door
 
Since daddy had no one else to beat up and his daughter was there Well . . .
 
When she was 13 she had 50 boys to her name
She was 14 when she met me
She had patience Took her time to teach me the ways of a woman
Took her time to teach me the ways of a man
 
Took her time to teach me the ways of love and tomorrow
 
When she was 15 she was dead
Her daddy wanted her the way she gave herself without condition to the boys
Her daddy was not going to get anything and hit back for the first time
It felt good although it would be the last time
 
When you live on the other side of the tracks it is easy to avenge
When I was 16 I found the road of leveling making things equal
Vengeance is mine said the 16 year old
 
 
 

Mark J. Mitchell’s latest novel, The Magic War just appeared from Loose Leaves Publishing. He studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver and George Hitchcock. His work has appeared in the several anthologies and hundreds of periodicals. Three of his chapbooks— Three Visitors, Lent, 1999, and Artifacts and Relics—and the novel, Knight Prisonerare available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble..  He lives with his wife the activist and documentarian, Joan Juster and makes a living pointing out pretty things in San Francisco.
A meager online presence can be found at https://www.facebook.com/MarkJMitchellwriter/

​ 
                                    An old whiz kid stared at the plate
                                    breathing in new-mown grass and dirt.
                                    The comfortable swing of his magicked arm
                                    called back his runaway boyhood--
                                    all the long afternoons of stiff practice.
                                    This mound was home. The stands were empty.
 
                                    Last time here—running on empty
                                    but still hanging K’s. That shrinking plate,
                                    like the saucers he used for practice
                                    when he was ten. All those balls in the dirt.
                                    He was the phenom of his neighborhood
                                    and that was enough. Now that arm
 
                                    feels each toss. He’s disarmed
                                    on his old home field. The empty
                                    bleachers. The silence from his boyhood
                                    with his vanished father and those chipped plate
                                    meals. Knowing he’s alone, he rubs red dirt
                                    on a ball. Tests a slider—for practice--
 
                                    Low and away. All those doctors. One practiced
                                    elbow voodoo. Another ignored the arm.
                                    Made him regress, form balls of wet dirt,                  
                                    throw at old pictures and empty
                                    frames. That talking doc—Be the plate,
                                    he’d say. He knew it wasn’t childhood.
 
 
 
 
                                    It was eyes. It was aim. Balls found wood
                                    instead of air. Even if he practiced
                                    like some first violinist, he’d miss that plate.
                                    Every tendon, every ache in his lazy arm
                                    recalled lost power. He was empty
                                    as a wall socket. He only ruled dirt
 
                                    and only when his sinker sank. He felt dirty,
                                    useless. He faced the cheap seats, pulling his hood
                                    up against drizzle. All those empty
                                    seats—full in a few hours. Batting practice
                                    still draws die-hards. He rubs the ruined arm,
                                   walks to the backstop and kisses the plate
 
                                   spitting out dirt. He’ll throw batting practice
                                  in another neighborhood. His dangling arm
                                  holds that much. There’s empty air across each plate.
 
                                                            

​                                    A music stand guards the half-shut window,
                                    surveying hills, a hidden town. Watching.
                                    Protecting this tune in its box. Drafts flow
                                    across the sill, but the psalm’s safe as snow.
 
                                    Once, someone stood here reading notes. He blew
                                    them through brass. He was almost praying
                                    with music. He stood, half-slammed the window,    
                                    surveyed his lost hills, his small city. Watching
 
                                    as if words would crawl out of breath. He’d know
                                    where she hid—or you. He waited, counting
                                    time. Then time left. The tune he was playing
                                    melted—vanishing quick as last year’s snow.
                                    Let music stand, guarding this cracked window.
 
 

​                        In the maiden’s game
                        things move quickly:
 
                        Pieces march with eyes
                        only for the kill,
 
                        never for the mate.
                        Until, midway through
 
                        you come to a knight fork
                        and become paralyzed.
 
                        The poisoned pawn alone
                        in the center. Constantly tempting.
 

​                        Because you fell fast through her shipwreck dream
                        red tides bit, kissed, cut you. Rusted iron
                        from ghost ships wounded you. Blood—white as cream--
                        spread and water grew transparent. Lungs tired.
                        Moonlight painted your bones white as paper.
                        Your legs still kicked—sense memory. Her face
                        focused bright through foam—the thinnest taper
                        you’d ever seen. The wreck shifts. You’re someplace
                        else—still on a doomed boat. Endless gray walls.
                        Boots ring on metal. Eternal gray halls
                        lead to a room. She waits as if she’d seen
                        the movie before. Knives, glasses, gray plates
                        are set. Past struggle, you watch her serene
                        smile. Days will break but nothing—nothing—waits.
 

 

​ 
                                    The outside man
                                    from poverty row
                                    never met his angels on time.
                                    So very bad movies
                                    remained unmade and spools
                                    of lovely, silver acetate
                                    stayed unexposed.
 
                                    There was a girl
                                    whose smile would have
                                    glittered in the dark and sold
                                    a lot of popcorn
                                    after the newsreel before
                                    the real movie.
                                    He saw her once. He wanted
                                    to shoot just one scene.
 
                                    He almost spoke
                                    but he was running late
                                    and angels are not--
                                    well, patient. She met
                                    a very nice milkman.
                                    They married.
                                    For no reason at all
                                    she never missed
                                    a B picture.
 
 

Keith Burkholder has been published in Creative Juices, Sol Magazine, Trellis Magazine, Foliate Oak Literary Journal, New Delta Review, Poetry Quarterly, and Scarlet Leaf Review.
He has a bachelor's degree in statistics with a minor in mathematics from SUNY at Buffalo (UB).

​Imagine a world with no wars,
No need for a military and law enforcement,
Where people really cared for one another,
No discrimination,
No tensions or destruction,
Imagine a world of peace,
It is great to fantasize,
Because this would be a total fantasy,
In life, one is lucky to have a great friend or two,
However, people change as they age,
We live in a world where we are indoctrinated,
Whether it is through schooling or religion,
This is just how it is,
Then after all of this, we die in the process,
We need a world of more peace,
This means less people getting married and having children,
There are too many ill equipped people doing this,
They are doing this to fit in,
Not because they really want to,
Parenting is hard and really trying on people,
Again, think what you want to,
This is all you can do,
There is no exact answer to this,
It would be great for more peace,
Take care and just keep an open mind which will lead you to a better tomorrow.

​I don't mean to go on rant here,
But, religion is overrated in our society,
There are nice people in the world,
However, there are more religious ones,
Religion is a choice,
Being good is hard for many,
In fact, even impossible,
People need to spread goodness,
If you look at it, religion is full of stories,
Stories that are not helpful in contemporary society,
Seeing goodness is rare, but great,
We live in a world driven by technology,
The goodness gene seems to leave people,
Technology is fantastic, but is abused by many,
Try to be good,
Religion can only work for few,
Yet, many believe in some higher order,
Take care, and think about spreading goodness,
This is all you can do,
Seize each moment all that you can,
Again, carpe diem.

Friday night,
Just got paid, three hundred dollars.
Next to the bodega, a storefront, 
Windows plastered with shabby banners...
"Funds Wired to Mexico and Pakistan."
A line overflows the check-cashing joint,
Day laborers, brown and black, speaking the language of staccato,
Delivery system of services to a vertical world.
Within, the pungent reek of curry, the stench of work...
A clerk, burly, disinterested,
Sits behind an inch of glass, sliding damp Benjamins
through a slot that separates him from his customers.
Huge silver pistol lies on the counter next to him,
Handy.
A wall of cigarette cartons looms above.
Grape soda, a pack of Newports, 
A fistful of folding money,
No longer exhausted from the week gone by,
The workers mobilize, energize...
Lured by a promise of barstool women and bottom-shelf vodka, 
An electric bill paid... 
Friday, the night is endless, the day laborers awake.
Saturday, broke and broken.
Sunday, a climb up four flights of stairs 
Residing in shadow
To sleep.
​
©2017. Sarah Ito. All rights reserved.

AIDS hospice, lower Second Avenue, 6: 02 a.m.
A city bus lumbers to a stop with its low hiss of hydraulics, 
on a grimy block of tenements and package stores 
that only sell pints.
It is a Tuesday.
The building is an uncertain shade of brown,
adorned with vulgarities of spray-can-graffiti in blood red and yellows.
Lights come up slowly, as if reluctant to cast their harsh fluorescence 
down cinder-block halls.
The weather outside, sticky and sweet, inside the hospice, sticky . . . 
and sweet.
A cloying sweetness overwhelms, like fried dough at the state fair,
and rotting fruit.
Here, walls, floors, plastic-covered sofas are all the color of buttermilk.
In the first light of someone's last day, the team assembles . . .
Blue gowns, blue latex gloves, white surgical masks so deceivingly soft, and goggles.
This is another world, an alternate universe 
that reeks of bleach and death,
viewed through goggles.
A thin cry of "Mommy" escapes from a narrow room, 
no nameplate identifies the patient, only a number--
Number 15—where a young black man lays on top of a hospital bed, 
sheets drenched by night-sweats, 
sopping wet.
A Romanesque face collapses into itself,
cheekbones no longer able to support the flesh,
skeletal frame topped off by tufts of bright yellow hair;
Adonis knee-capped by a virus.
"Mommy . . ." he cries again, to no one, as the track of a single tear trickles across his sunken cheek,
his skin, chalky and peeling, like old stained wallpaper, 
his eyes, wide open, see nothing.
A team member closes the door, and moves on.
Another team member pushes a metal cart, laden with tubing, syringes, 
towels and gauze,
and plastic jugs of bleach.
No one speaks.
"Mother! Oh, Mother!" calls out the patient in Room 17. "Mother, please come, Mother, please!"
The team stops again, and with a nod, tubing is selected, a needle attached, 
and a single gowned nurse enters, tentatively,
a spectral wraith moving through the gloom, 
as Number 17 falls quiet, and lesions are cleaned and dressed.
And physical pain is medicated
for a short while.
A framed photograph sits on the bedside table;
a radiant young woman, the essence of a debutante, 
now Patient Number 17,
beaming at the photographer, a spotted puppy at her feet...
With her, a man, young, handsome, his hair black and flowing, arms wrapped around her,
as if to protect her
into eternity.
Number 17 no longer resembles that carefree young woman.
Number 17 no longer resembles a woman.
Looking at the photograph, the silent attendant feels the salty anguish rising, 
but in the Aids hospice, tears cannot be wiped away with latex gloves,
and no tissue can penetrate the protective goggles.
Day drifts into the agony of night;
the screams and cries for a mother who has long abandoned her child
become less, and then cease.
Photographs become contaminated items, to be boxed up and burned,
no longer a window into someone's previous life, 
a keeper of happy memories,
just trash.
The room numbers are reassigned to the next incoming patient . . . 
an identity defined by random digits.
So, passes one more day, a twenty-four hour 
limp to the finish line.
In this world of bleach and death
and patients by-the-numbers,
that ends for some at 6 p.m. with the punch of a timeclock,
for others, it just ends.
​
© 2017. Sarah Ito


 

​Once …
Once upon a time …
Once upon a time there was a vibrant young girl,
full of passion and ambition,
full of pride and self-worth.
 
Time …
Time is the great thief.
It beats you down when you are ill-prepared.
It takes more than your youthful appearances,
it robs your ebullience and inner stalwartness.
 
Forward …
Forever forward …
never back,
never standing still,
always accelerating with each blink of the eye.
 
Graying hair and clouded eyes aside,
some manage to soldier
past the desolation,
past the indignation,
past the animosity.
 
Many …
Many will tell you …
Many will tell you that
old age brings new confidence,
but many lie.
 

​Oh killer of paper balls
And tormentor of squirrels
Laying at my feet
You have warmed your way
Into my heart
 
Soft vibrations emanate
At the touch of a hand
A sound so intoxicating
To those who are enchanted
By your spell
 
Murderous claws and fangs
Bared and ready for attack
Against the invisible enemy
Lurking safely behind
The flower pot
 
Luminous jade eyes
Capture the imagination
For some you are a god
Others see you as
An omen of evil
 
Oh unpredictable imp
And lover of comfort
You are a delight to me
And those others
Whom you allow in
 
 

​A tangled toss of dreams upon a placid sea,
what ransom is paid for such a delight?
 
Oh bittersweet consequence of life!
 
In sunlight, the essence of reality
fades with the morning mist.
 
My existence is arranged in droplets of hope.
Brightly colored time sings back within echoes
of a life I do not recall.
 
Seeing through eyes of the faceless,
there is nowhere to turn, so forward I trudge. 
 
The moment has come to escape entrapment,
to unleash the force within. To live!
 
At times loneliness consumes me,
as thoughts vaporize beyond my grasp.
 
Like rancid milk, a mockery of all that I hold dear, 
but within my reach is redemption.
 
Dreams now coalesce and float to the top
as I wade through the murky void.
 
Ransom paid, I am once more free
to live the life I envisioned from the first.
 
 

​Uninhibited, David danced
before the Lord,
wildly and unashamed.
Clashing cymbals, beating drums,
fueled the passions of his heart,
as the Ark lead the way.
Author of the Psalms,
girded with linen ephod,
bare arms flailing to the music,
he praised his God,
His exuberance could not
be contained,
even while being chastised. .
His lineage was blessed
for all eternity, for the only
begotten son would herald
forth from his house.
And, so today we dance still,
for God loves a joyous heart!
 

​I did not write it down,
and now it is lost.
I did not write it down,
now I pay the cost.
 
The fragility of memory and thought,
if only for the moment that I bought,
rolling over going back to sleep,
thinking that my words would surely keep.
 
On the nightstand were paper and pen.
If only I had written it right then.
Now frustration and anger set in.
Being too tired was my only sin.
 

​He remembers a morning when he was a boy, rising
to the reveille of birdsong expertly warbled by a pair
of robins just outside his open bedroom window.
The chirping proclaimed the promise of spring and life
 
lay before him like a set of shiny railroad tracks headed
for the future. If only he had put his ear to those rails
to hear the distant grinding wheels of a dark, destructive
diesel hurtling toward him for an inevitable collision.
 
But, as young men often do, he never took the time to look
ahead. And now, twenty springs later, he is startled awake
by a guard yelling into a microphone telling the men to get
dressed and go to breakfast. That day, a few hours before
 
his parole hearing, he walks the exercise yard in an orange
jumpsuit with a garbage bag. His eyes are downturned,
looking for cigarette butts in the dirt and sparse grass,
as if he were an April robin scavenging for worms.  
 

​He has never wed and in middle age he isn’t likely to.
And it’s just as well, since half of marriages end
 
in divorce and there’s no point in taking chances.
He always wanted a marriage like his parents, happily
 
together for over fifty years. But he never seems to meet
the right woman. Perhaps it’s because he has a knack
 
for finding women in bars as he did one night in Reno.
He kept her telephone number in his wallet for months,
 
as if it were something he might someday need, but he
didn’t know why. And before long, looking at the contents
 
of his wallet in a dark booth of a Chinese restaurant,
he stares at her number but can’t remember her face.
 
He crumples the scrap of paper and places it on his empty
plate like an unsatisfying prediction from a fortune cookie.
 
 

​The only reason I have an annual dental hygiene appointment is to
reduce the odds of my dentist actually working on me. In a dream
I once saw my dentist, a descendant of the famous Dr. Mengele,
 
through the half open door to his private office. He was smiling at
a display case full of miniature African animals he had carved from
human teeth with a dental drill. Although that was a dream, when I
 
see him in person, I have visions of Laurence Olivier in Marathon
Man approaching me with the drill asking, Is it safe?  The only
time I want to see my dentist is after the hygienist finishes up with
 
the tooth polish and he comes into the room for a short social chat
as I nervously writhe in the chair. Then he looks around my mouth
with a mirror, gently touching some teeth with a curved stainless
 
steel pick, ominously saying uh huh looking back and forth between
my mouth and x-rays posted on a light box. And if the prophylaxis
has worked as planned, he says Everything looks good. That’s why
 
I religiously attend my yearly dental hygiene appointments with
the expectation that they will find no cavities, gingivitis or a
malignant node beneath my tongue. Just a quick cleaning and
 
a walk to the parking lot under a sunny blue sky with my goodie
bag and a single appointment card for the following year. And
on such a day I often stop at the mall for some shopping and
 
lunch in the food court to celebrate another year of dodging the drill,
the syringe or the pliers. But on todays visit the x-rays show multiple
cavities between the teeth and my gums bled profusely during cleaning.
 
Today, I leave the office unfurling my umbrella against a heavy
rain with a handful of appointment cards wondering if my molars
will soon be added to the menagerie in the dentists private office.
 
 
 
 

​He lies bloody
in the clearing,
tuskless, soundless
and motionless.
 
The elephants ears,
deaf as caladiums,
will never hear again
the sounds of the African bush.
 
He will pay no heed to the alarming
scream of the baboon, the trumpeting
of his brothers, the hiss, snort and
grunt of the hippopotamus. Gone
 
will be the sniggering of the hyena,
the call of the guinea fowl, and the
sounds of an African thunderstorm.
He will not hear the chirping of crickets
 
in the Bushveld at night, the shrill screech
of the fish eagle, or the night sounds
of lions growling. He will be oblivious
to the penetrating call of a startled ibis
 
and the yelping of the black-backed jackal.
And all of this silence, this irrevocable deafness
of death, is just so someone might hear the
sound of a compliment on a new ivory necklace.
 

​She stares at the field of white light, the cursor winking at her
as if to say, not today honey. The legal pad, her usual go-to
 
solution, has six pages of starts, cross-outs and erasures. So,
she decides to venture to the park because writing in her study
 
has drawn a blank, not just for one day but for weeks. On the day
she goes to write a poem outdoors, the park sidewalk is complicated
 
with hungry sparrows. And now, she approaches a bench of forest
green with peeling paint and splinters poised to snag her skirt, so she
 
sits on a low wall next to a towering birch. Looking up, she sees a
large owl strangely perched on a branch in the middle of the day.
 
There are drops of water from a passing storm beading up on the
few bench slats that still retain paint. Clouds wrung of rain float
 
past as the sun begins to burn through. And what will be the topic
of her poem? A verse about the owl, the rainfall, the sparrows, or
 
the deteriorating bench? It could be about the tree with its peeling
birch bark proffered like sheets of paper. But that’s all been done
 
thousands of times by other poets and she wants to write about
something unique. And then inspiration strikes. It could be
 
about a woman poet who goes to the park with a dried-up muse
and once in nature regains her voice. But the owl looks down
 
at her with riveting yellow-orange eyes and intones, Ars Poetica
was written by Horace in the year 19 BC in which he describes
 
moving out of Rome to the country to escape writers block.
And that’s when she decides her best bet is to stick with the owl.
 
 
 

Beauty and love go side by side
On an intoxicated charming ride
The tide spreads far and wide
Then how the fragrance one can hide
Beauty pierces like a ray, like a laser
Love touches beauty and becomes chaser
By being on the edge of a razor
Beauty always aspires for an appraiser
You and me are like fire and water
Beauty is pawned on love’s barter
Sensuality in beauty is thy charter
On which love becomes always a martyr
Let us forget the row in spring
Let the petals wear love’s ring
Dew drops will definitely bring
Queen’s gift of heart for the king
Let us be like a colorful kite
Let us overlook the world in sight
For love is an emotion golden bright
Which will bring all darkness to light

Copyright 2016 Golden Glow
Abbottabad Pakistan