Fiona Pitt-Kethley is the author of more than twenty books of prose and poetry. She is British but has lived in Spain for the last thirteen years together with her family and an adopted family of feral cats. She is currently writing a prose book and poems on the Sierra Minera. Mina Segundo Ferrocarril Its mouth is hidden in the woods. A slope leads up to it behind a cemetery. The Romans mined here first, then Modern Man reopened it, extending passages. So many Roman mines ended up thus. Nineteenth and Twentieth century bosses lacked divining skills to search out other spots, preferred to scrape the last scraps of the ore from almost worked-out mines that once were good. The tunnel´s filled with mud up to our knees. Its roof is low, easy to strike your head. Our ancestors were shorter in those days. Along the route some rusting rails emerge The passageway divides, forking in two, its Roman straighteneess bending to a curve. Galena glints where lights illumine it. No hammer needed on these brittle walls. They yield their samples to our fingers´ touch, gypsum, rainbowed with goethite, yellowed with iron. The left branch leads to ancient areas. Some masonry that´s growing stalactites. Clear water pooling on the floor beside. A white precipitate turns it to milk as we plod through it to the tunnel´s end. The right branch has a ramp that leads upstairs. This mine goes up where other mines go down. The upper level´s dry. The clearest quartz, galena, siderite adorn its walls. gypsum so delicate it turns to dust. More passages, another drystone wall leads up for those who have the skill to climb. A telltale string other collectors left marks out the path to precious minerals.
0 Comments
Born 1964, (Liverpool, England) difficult birth, didn't find my voice until my youth. Years of thinking I was nobody and treated as such. However, hit the paper papering over the scars. Found understanding and belief through words. I have been published and performed widely from the BBC, The Tate, galleries and pubs and everything in between. My poems autobiographical, others topical and several my take on life. Hope you enjoy reading as much as I have enjoyed writing. Please feel free to share your thoughts on links below. Contact: David R Mellor mellordramatic@live.co.uk Website (wix) The Poetry of David R. Mellor (Facebook) The Poetry of David R. Mellor (Twitter) “olunikat” The Poetry of David R. Mellor (YouTube) MellorDR This Life is Scaring The Life Out of Me This life is scaring The life Out of me Whether it’s the neighbour banging Or a bomb on the road This world is Taking the life Out of me Droplets of tears flow From the screen Whether from Pakistan Or Paris And all places in-between This world Is scaring Life out of me Look at the stars They abuse and titillate and make us Think “what the fuck” We follow their every word And photo shoots Bigger than Jesus and Allah combined These stars and celebries Mingle like trash in our minds Bieber posted farting Kylie looks a bit tired Knightly lost a bit Cowell put a few pounds on And we bask in this insanity... Buy copies of “Hello” When we should be saying “Goodbye” To these no marks Has beens And celebrate The real celebrities... You and Me YOU STOP TIME Time heals Time kneels Too quick Too fast Too slowly Over painful moments Quicker… At the moments We want to last It opens the day And closes our eyes. And I’m happy at Every beat of our day And the moments Spent… In your eyes our mourning fate We grieve like melted snow Nothing to hold on And they will never know How the warm tears gathered On our mourning fate To repeat this sad snow storm On each and every face Time wasted, time wasted, time wasted me I didn't realise how bad life could be Until I realised I was me Naked in front of the mirror Bulges where there shouldn't be Time wasted, time wasted, time wasted me I didn't realise how quickly the clock of time could Cover me, leave me, breathless, and not how it should be Me up a tree Me with you Carl creating Marvel figures before tea Time wastes, time wasted, time wasted me And you my father and mother feckless and insecure Gave me a back bone of a cripple always to spend my life on the bottom of the sea, for sure Time wasted, time wasted, time wasted you and me OPEN HOUSE (fictions) and an expanded edition of the prize-winning SunStone Poetry Press chapbook, EVERYTHING SPEAKING CHINESE: ENHANCED, REVISED EDITION, were published in 2015, while GROUND OF THIS BLUE EARTH and UNDER ARIES were published in 2012 and 2014, respectively. Gordon's awards include National Endowment for the Arts & Humanities Fellowships and writing residencies, while several poems have been nominated for Pushcarts. NIGHT COMPANY was nominated for an NEA Western States' Book Awards. He divides personal and professional lives among Asia, Europe, and the Mountain/Desert Southwest. What is Light After All but Desire?
Better to illuminate than merely to shine . . . -Aquinas- Beyond the complex, a parti-colored suite of prayer-flag kerchiefs hitched on hemp And cord stretched across the patch of thin-skinned, filéd, silver poplars adorning Night, People, Pueblo, Llano decked out in desert ecru, ochre, divining light. And then they ignite So soon as spiritlamps, spots of unknowable light rarely seen, or first-felt in the blood, Until late, blue, then red and violet sparking inside and out chambered houses of the poor Like winter-white luminaria, now midsummer-mad, adobe, stucco, terrones marsh-brick Glowing, while the flat pale sky requites its dark desire over clumps of mountains splayed in Silhouette, white night caught in the desertspell of wild iris, jasmine and lilac, Chaste berry shrub, Sexpot Tease Cereus, her solitary solstice taking nightwhite root, blooming oh so virginal! For once, and once only, out of cactus in fragrant darkness, then poof— gone with the dawn, Light after all but desire inspiriting dreamy clay. Spring-Moon Lotuses on a Summer’s Evening (after Yung Shou-p’ing) What if they’re not as sublime as baroque Blue Nile lotus, Crème-white Madonna lily, ascending aflash from sacred waters, Stems stiff as righteous Jamaican spliffs, têtes regally coiffured, But just gangly and beige and somewhat scumbled, brushed on Mulberry bark or rice paper, their taupe, misty palette Home, Opening nightly up from rushes and shallows for no one but Themselves, Art, Nature, Poetry, and the unseen Spring-Moon Illuminating mist just enough for feel, just as it illumines every Mortal thing in this world, however briefly, fabled glam aesthetes Sporting toque-blanche-et-azure crowns, milkweed and toadstool—, Sunflowers caught furiously yellow on canvas in the act of being Nothing more beautiful than they already were, are, always have been, In bleak, wintry Arles. Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press). Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays (Winter Goose Publishing). Perceptions, Fault Lines and Tremors will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. Conditioned Response (Nazar Look). Blossoms of Decay will be published by Nazar Look. Resonance will be published by Dreaming Big Press. His novels include: Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press) Acts of Defiance (Artema Press). Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing). His short story collection, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City. Unnatural Selection A giant storm is coming and people rush to prepare, hurrying to supermarkets, hardware stores, the sensible buying candles, batteries, water, dried food, thinking about survival. The stupid buy beer, drugs, candy, waiting to be entertained by a destructive force that no longer removes the unfit, mentally deficient, protected by big screen tvs. Choices It is better to strive for fragile happiness, especially when things go wrong and misery beckons, eager to encourage self-pity, withdrawal from the constant struggle that afflicts us daily in this demanding life that promises no tomorrows, except to the deluded who cannot conceive that their departure may be a moment away, decided abruptly by the coincidence of fate. Charles Leggett is a professional actor based in Seattle, WA, USA. Recent publications include FRIGG Magazine, Graze, Latchkey Tales, Form Quarterly, Firewords (United Kingdom), Southword Journal (Munster Literature Centre, Cork City, Ireland), and Punchnel’s. Others include The Lyric and Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry; his long poem “Premature Tombeau for John Ashbery” is an e-chapbook in the Barnwood Press “Great Find” series. FOR THE STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE The latter two weeks of the run, First hour or so of Act One, I set these on a page As I sat on the stage-- I hope they will give you some fun! --Intiman Playhouse, Seattle, WA, USA, July 2008 1. Stella laid all her cards on the table. If the metaphor’s old, here’s a fable: Of a love and Love’s War, Of a child that she bore And a bed frame, it seems, that was stable. It is easily said of the Hubbles That they live in a world full of troubles. But their kiss-and-make-ups Leave them grinning like pups, And the plaster reduced to a rubble. One senses, of Neighbor Claudine, There’s little that she hasn’t seen. If I speak out of turn, Comes her hellish slow burn-- Here’s hoping you know what I mean. Poor old Pablo, he really can’t win: Exaltation expressed, or chagrin, At the best or worst hand In the tongue of his land-- Made to say it por inglés again! That strapping young news-rag collector, He kissed Stella’s sister—plumb wrecked her! As for him, well, we yearn At his age, then we learn. He’s sadder, more wise, and erecter. The whore with the dark ruby lips, Just watch how she tosses her hips: A card shark at poker Just holding her Joker And languidly tossing in chips. If you think that policeman is buff Then you don’t know him quite well enough: Doesn’t work out with Mitch, He just knows how to stitch Downy diamonds to fill out his rough.* Can’t help but say, speaking of Mitch, Can’t help but say ain’t life a bitch. And it helps that it rhymes In the way spire chimes Help gravediggers digging their ditch. New Orleans folk mourning your dead: That flower-girl, parse what she’s said! If she knows you don’t know How the language should go She’ll sell you dead flowers instead! There are things lying deep in that “purse” That is carried onstage by the Nurse That might make one unsure Of a word such as “cure”-- It begins in the same way as curse! As symbol, the Doctor brings Death; Asks nothing from one but one’s breath. His cold work, one may feel (Though his scythe be cold steel), Is this night not reckoned a theft. And there once was a lady named Blanche. Figure her as a bough, not a branch; And as blossom, not flower; Not a copse, but a bower; Under drifts—must we say avalanche? One said, “I am the glamorous type,” And then, “I am the glamorous type.” After Stan said, “So what?” His stubbed cigarette butt Went for compost, while Silence came ripe. 2. The streetcar named Desire Has a hot seat, don’t you know. It sizzles when it’s moving slow But, as with wind through fire, Consumes at faster speeds; The streets a grayish, smoky blur, Its riders’ speech ill-blent in slur. Exhilaration bleeds Upwards through the spine-- Which tolerates the jolts and shifts In gravity—then gravely lifts The spirits through a fine, User-friendly atlas- Catalogue, a River Bourbon Easing past Elysium. Pomade-primped and hatless In gusts of city air The mild conductor calls them out With his dry indifferent shout And blithely turns to stare At all the obvious Tourists, visitors and bums (He sees right through the locals), hums Something rather tuneless (Though mindful of the downbeat)-- As of what intoxicates, As of where we meet our fates-- That someone in the hot seat Can’t but hear and squirm A little there, as if, in dream: That far-off, nigglingly extreme And half-forgotten worm Of conscience sometimes found To be—when under scrutiny, And with uncertain irony-- Dream’s subject, crawls around An ever-nearing corner. A cat’s meow. A paper moon. The crack of gunfire. The sultry moan Of Adiós from a mourner. A honeysuckle rose Singing Della Robbia blues, Brown spindly fingers drawn to muse Along the pliant rows Of orchard white and sable. Perhaps a gull’s accusing shriek Awakens you. A blinding streak Of light—a gnashing cable Showering sparks, or else The sun, merely, the moon, merely, Any naked bulb—you’ve nearly Missed your stop! The shells On beaches of the ocean That you’ve contrived to die upon Will whisper of it when you’ve gone, This rattletrap emotion: We’ll press them home and listen, Our faces taut in expectation Of certain sounds, as its oblation Down our cheekbones glistens. * The author, who played the policeman, had shoulder pads inserted into his uniform. Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis Missouri. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.gpbT6XZy.dpbs The Man Who Lives in the Gym St. Procopius College Lisle, Illinois after World War II The man who lives in the gym sleeps in a nook up the stairs to the rear. Since Poland he's slept there, his tools bright in a box locked under his bed. At noon bells call him down to the stones that weave under oaks to the abbey where he at long table takes meals with the others the monks have left in for a week, or a month, or a year or forever, whatever the need. The others all know that in Poland his wife had been skewered, his children partitioned, that he had escaped in a freight car of hams. So when Brother brings in, on a gun metal tray, orange sherbet for all in little green dishes, they blink at his smile, they join in his laughter. Tenement Scene, Havana, 1962 Woman in a window brushing long hair madly screams at a little boy down in the street licking an ice cream cone some man gave him some man she doesn’t know not the man she’s brushing her hair for who doesn't show up. The man with the ice cream may have to do. Special of the Day It’s Rocky’s Diner but it’s Brenda’s counter, been that way for 10 years. Brenda has her regulars who want the Special of the Day. They know the week is over when it’s perch on Friday. Her drifters don’t care about the Special of the Day. They want Brenda instead but she’s made it clear she’s not available. Her regular customers tip well. Long ago, they gave up trying to see her after work. After awhile her drifters go to the diner down the street to see if the waitress there is any more hospitable. Brenda’s regulars don’t know she has three kids her mother watched every day until Brenda took a vacation out of town, then came back and helped her mother find a place of her own. Now Brenda’s back at the diner, serving her regulars and discouraging her drifters, while Marsha, her bride, watches the kids. Rony Nair slogs as an oil and gas Risk Management “expert/ director/ Vice President/consultant”-up on the greasy pole! He’s been 20 years in the industry since starting off as an Industrial engineer a long time ago. Extensively traveled. Dangers fronted often. But that’s his day job. The one that pays for bread and bills. He’s been a worshipper at the altar of prose and poetry for almost as long as he could think. They have been the shadows of his life. (They’ve been) the bedsit at the end of a long day; the repository that does the sound of silence inimitably well. Not unlike a pet; but with one core difference- the books do suggest, educate and weave a texture that marginally provides streams of thought that are new. And one of the biggest pleasures of his life, is certainly holding a treasured edition in one’s hands. Physically. Rony’s been writing poetry since 1985 and was a published columnist with the Indian Express in the early 1990’s. He is also a published photographer about to hold his first major exhibition and currently writes a regular column for two online journals; one of them widely read over South India. Rony has been profiled by the Economic Times of Delhi and has also written for them. He cites V.S Naipaul, A.J Cronin, Patrick Hamilton, Alan Sillitoe, John Braine and Nevil Shute in addition to FS Fitzgerald as influences on his life; and Philip Larkin, Dom Moraes and Ted Hughes as his personal poetry idols. Larkin’s’ collected poems would be the one book he would like to die with. When the poems perish. As do the thoughts! Caress The more certain the ambiguity, The more certain the truth. you're out there, knowing, the way i feel in solicitude. the more i feel sequestered the more i sense your presence walking the streets adrift alone. the only lay is in riposte the only death by raffle the only snakes we embrace are all deadpanned as one. the only truth stays filtered through a hundred different lies the only broadsword slaying the beast lays sheathed. in deceit. the only response is silence the only rage a game. the only faultline lies buried beneath. Falsehood. Blame. there’s only love. buried amidst the refuse. the rubble. the delusion. the hate. freeform. Danny P. Barbare resides in the Southern U.S. He attended Greenville Technical College, where his poetry won The Jim Gitting's Award. And has also been nominated for Best of the Net by Assisi Online Journal. He likes to travel to The Blue Ridge Mountains especially Carl Sandburg's old home which is now run by the U.S. Forestry Department in Flat Rock, North Carolina. And he also loves to travel to the lowlands of Charleston, South Carolina. His poetry has appeared locally, nationally, and abroad as faraway as Japan. He has been published in Canada as well as thirty other countries over the past 34 years. Shopping with My Wife at Mall I’m green and red I’m square, round, and rectangular I’m a candle I’m Winter Candy Apple Merry Cookie, Jingle All the Way Vanilla Bean Noel I’m Hickory Farms, William Sonora Organic Tea I’m song, Calvin and Klein, children and Santa and Christmas trees I’m Macy’s, jewelry, and everything else all the way. Ideal Baseball Collage Painted Like an American Flag Well rounded like a baseball, America is stitched together fast to help friends and throw an assortment of pitches to enemies like a typical red, white and blue game, that yearns for homeruns as if they are painted in the shape of a flag. John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and the anthology, No Achilles with work upcoming in Big Muddy Review, Gargoyle, Coal City Review and Nebo. A CHILD SHORT-CHANGED ON BODIES OF WATER by John Grey It's nothing special, about as small in size as a bakery parking lot. And, to be honest, it's hardly a gem of sparkling waters, merely a blob of drowned weeds. It's as unremarkable as the kids I went to school with and yet, from that ordinary bunch, emerged my closest friends. No one ever wasted a moment fishing here. And it's certainly no swimming hole. The best you can do is dip your fingers, maybe disturb the muddy bottom a little. Or scoop up tadpoles for a brief life in ajar. Not even nostalgia can come to its aid. You'd think that, removed by years, it would grow in stature, purify, stock itself with trout. But it's been a struggle for time. And my memory has no wish to contradict their findings. Truth is, it was the only pond we had so we had to make the most of it. But it couldn't rise to the occasion. become a mighty river for warring tribes or the Pacific Ocean for our navy games. I envy those who grew up near real lakes, who could marvel at the circumference, the depths, without resorting to imagination. Yes, they do darkly color their reminiscing with tales of kids drowning. A small price to pay for all that coming up for air. LUNCH WITH KATE by John Grey
Kate leaves room beside her on a bench. The quick controlled sashay of her slim body across the seat, the squeezing of her arms tight to her sides, allows me to sit without our thighs quite touching. I still slide my way in tiny increments to make that microscopic gap between us, a statement in itself. Her perfume however is far from shy. It's in my nostrils, reeking femininity. Her conversation is sweet and circles topics like the kids playing catch on the distant greensward or hand-locked lovers drifting by us as they stroll the park trails. The fun, the seriousness, are like our bodies, putting up nervous barriers even as they will themselves to intertwine a little. It's a break from work and we eat our lunch together. Crumbs drop within easy reach of pigeons. Hints follow suit but without a beak to snare them. We are not in love but there's a definite liking there. Bread in teeth, water bottle at the ready, pants and dress separated by a thread, glances shared between face and meadow, not forgetting birds cooing around our shoes - on a warm midday in the park, this is what attraction has to work with. Robert Knox is a creative writer, a freelance journalist for the Boston Globe, a blogger on nature, books and other subjects, and a rabid gardener, who makes his home in Quincy, Massachusetts. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Boston University (M.A. in English literature), he is a former college teacher and newspaper editor, whose stories, poems, and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications. His poems have recently appeared in Verse-Virtual, Guide to Kulchur Creative Journal, The Poetry Superhighway, Bombay Review, Earl of Plaid, Rain, Party & Disaster Society and Semaphore Journal. He serves as a contributing writer for Verse-Virtual, an online poetry journal. A collection of his poems, titled "Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty," will be published this year by Coda Crab Books THE REBEL ANGELS LOOK BACK by Robert Knox
So in the last days of winter, when the turn of the season will not come in the month that trumpets its arrival with leonine roar, strutting its changeable hour, full of sound and fury, because the poor earth below is still burdened with six-foot phalanxes of cold, slow-frozen dirty walls that once were exposed, in their modesty, as 'sidewalks,' when the soul finds no sweet release in jumping the time to come, the whole graduated journey, and so we launch tormented flesh straight to the days of eighty in the shade, sun-burnished sand beneath the toes, warm saltwater sluicing the limbs like the gurgling god of some peripatetic Neptune, green and endlessly inventive, palms being palms, swaying heavy-handed, lifted overhead in some unsolicited blessing, familiar flowers looking like July, creatures ordinarily clad stretched bare to the healing air .... Well, in brief, we'll take it, balm and anodyne, warm water, pleasant airs, fair breezes and from the look of things (neighbors smiling like cream-fed cats) nobody paying a dime for any of this Till, thunder-struck on a summer's day, time's fell hour slices down, our curtain falls and villain check-out time, that winter of the imagination, looms before us, we gather our share of remembrance to trundle northward, icy patches sloughing beneath the wings of the homebound jet And picturing once more, in the album of bittersweet remembrance those beatitudes with attitudes, the postures and sun-streamed smiles of those who recline as if forever on adjustable chairs in the rarefied greensleeves of heavenly breezes, balmy hours, occasional cloudiness, a few sprinkles just the other night dampening the towels and yesterday's pool wear, contemplating the body-poach of the hot tub later, supper on the balcony, how could we not feel (if only for an instant) like the disobedient angels casting last looks at paradise lost as they are driven cruelly to a very warm place which frankly -- at certain times, days of blizzards, blackouts, and broken trains -- does not sound too very terrible either Frank Geurrandeno is a Roanoke College undergraduate studying Creative Writing. Early in his career, he has found success with poetry and short fiction in various print and online publications including Boston Literary Magazine, Dark Matter Journal, Sediments Literary-Arts Journal, Word Soup's "End Hunger" series, East Jasmine Review, and most recently in The Jawline Review. http://www.twitter.com/RC_FrankG "electric blue"
I am white canvas and you are electric blue the spark of my all "entity" a gasp of billows the cockcrow asks for my name brushing sandy coves "red" masked men stare behind the curtains on stained windows vermilion eye "Mock" Of magnificence, shrewd journeys to the godful mend witching hours. Marie Hanna Curran resides in Galway, Ireland. Her poetry and short stories have been published in Ireland, the US and India and her column “Musings from her Couch” can be read in the magazine Athenry News and Views. Her first poetry collection Observant Observings, was published in 2014. To see more, visit www.mariehcurran.com. DEFILED MY FATHER by Marie Hanna Curran I blame the British for my father’s problems, The way they used us Irish to farm their lands And so it’s come as no surprise, to find my father in his sixties Bended back and knees, calving cows, sowing grass seeds. This man, my father, works past the sun Knowing nothing of the word retirement, Knowing only that it was his father who bought this land Worked and died doing so. My father’s identity is so wrapped up in each sod of earth That as a child, I was referred to as His Daughter - never my mother’s - And I was nurtured on zealous stories of my ancestors, How they hailed from the Parish of Glenmore and how my cousin Pat owns that land now. This word ownership means nothing to me now And in this active nothingness I’ve defiled my father, my father’s father. I’ve defiled My Father. LIMITED HORIZON by Maria Hanna Curran Trees, thick leafed trees of April Through to thicker early autumn Encompass my horizon, Stop me Seeing beyond Cloonkeen, Gurteen Hold my back from Balymac– Their constant summer teasing Filling up, greening up My pegged fence line. Only I know come late autumn And into winter, I’ll catch my glimpse again Prolong my view beyond this one room Parish. By then, Hungary’s one hundred and ten mile fence Across its Serbian border Tasked to hold optimistic migrants back, To keep them out of view Of European leafed trees, keep them in view of peep holed wire Throughout autumn, winter, spring. Again– Will be joined by bigger fences, bigger struggles Europe troubled. WORK OF SOME GOD by Marie Hanna Curran
Near Perfect Work of some God, She’s thrust into our world ovum to calf Known only to us as Five-Legged-Calf, Dad settles all giggles With pure mathematics: The cost of her milk worth less than her life As an amputee calf. Near perfect Work of some God, She vacated our barn To be re-cast again. Christina Murphy’s poetry is an exploration of consciousness as subjective experience, and her poems appear in numerous journals and anthologies, including, PANK, Dali’s Lovechild, and Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, and the anthologies From the Roaring Deep: A Devotional in Honor of Poseidon and the Spirits of the Sea, The Great Gatsby Anthology, Let the Sea Find Its Edges, and Remaking Moby-Dick. Her work has been nominated multiples times for the Pushcart Prize and for the Best of the Net anthology. A TOWN WHERE THE MERMAID by Christina Murphy a town where the mermaid is a run-down bar and fishing nets hang on wooden walls, the sea nearby rocks in fragmented lights; the waves are reminders of change and temporality— nothing lasts beyond small motions not hearts or grains of sand, not even stars someday when infinity is exhausted and nothing remains to understand the silence INTERSECTIONS by Christina Murphy The order of things is the outer shell of stems & roots, waterfalls & bedrock opening into the softest sighs of patterns shaped by the intersections of evening light The grains of ocean sand are blossoming stairways, narrowly extending into a way of being, silently beautiful in all forms of light Concealed in clouds are the tears of the lost, the wrong turns, the sad choices—all hidden within the white shadows floating, like delicate smoke, across a deeply blue & motionless sky ALL THINGS CONTAINED BY ZERO by Christina Murphy
1. Hillsides in the blue haze of evening where intricate honeysuckle vines frame the melancholy of the sun’s diminishing heat Rippled water shines in silken layers, and all the world’s failings are revealed by the loneliness of each mooring of dreams in an endless sea All things contained by zero will be reshaped by the meanings held in one fragile moment-- night’s darkness approaching like the shadows Of moonlight on ancient waters, restless with currents as the graceful arc of gravity connects land and sky through a latticework of clouds and waves stirring 2. In light, in darkness, the world does not seem a globe but a surface layered with growth and diminishment and a circumference that defines what might have been Like the stones on eroded shores that, in twilight, look like angels seeking a way to speak to the heavens, the indifference is cold and deep, more silent than foreboding And only the tides—like blood—move through channels and bow down to the fate that holds infinity in its scope and reshapes the absence entwined within every moment Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over a thousand of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, and Queen’s Ferry Press’s Best Small Fictions for work published in 2011 through 2015. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. He lives in Denver. Octopus by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois I am an octopus and evil Telepathic I inhabit the minds of men My motivation: I wrote a memoir but no one read it The ink ran The paper sogged I’m going to rewrite it and include the most recent events of my life and my most recent thoughts the most brilliant ones ever By rights, it should be a best seller but every agent tells me it’s either too literary, too crude, too sexual, too feminist too quirky or simply too octopoid for the mass market If I were a famous talk show host I could easily find representation but I’m an octopus living in a hole at the bottom of the ocean that’s like the worst public housing in the most terrible slum I flee from speedy predators like sea lions-- that’s one of the chapters in my book Sea lions lack subtlety They never suffer from depression Even when they’re thrown off an ice flow by a killer whale or two and their offspring are eaten they never get blue never suffer hate or thirst for vengeance-- that’s not the way they’re made They lack emotion My memoir is full of emotion It has depth I sometimes suffer depression and have many notes about how depression gets one in touch with one’s soul though if I had my choice I would forego depression entirely Word by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois In the beginning was the Word but what word was it? Was it Fuck! after God bashed his thumb hammering out the first day’s creation or was it a long drawn out yeah of appreciation as God watched day and night draw apart? Or was it No! after God got a unexpected glimpse of human evil? Was it then, even before Man was created that He began planning the flood that would drown the world? Theologians have said: Our God is a conflicted god Did He also create a planet made of anti-depressants (like the moon is said to be made of green cheese) that he could eat of from time to time? Another theological mystery: does serotonin act in God’s mind the way it acts in ours? Was He the first to understand the concept of the inhibition of serotonin reuptake? South by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois We sailed south into a sunburnt nowhere that we could not see because our optic nerves had been burnt but we’d been told that the skeletons of slaves littered the landscape We pulled up to Yawzi Point where the victims of Yaws had been quarantined by their ungrateful masters Go no further read the sign at the head of the point That sign now hangs on the wall of a Copenhagen museum Museum goers feel a chill as they ignore it and go right, left or straight ahead into other galleries The specters of those dead slaves reside there all of them disfigured by the sun and hunger toil and illness The coffee in the downstairs café turns red Scandinavia is no longer such a utopia as the past merges with the present and the future Einstein protests: Each tense must remain in its own realm This trespass must not be allowed! But the museum guards are propped against the walls in catatonic poses An emergency session of Parliament is called Colin James has a chapbook of poetry Writing Knights Press: Dreams of the Really Annoying by Colin James called Dreams Of The Really Annoying from Writing Knights Press. PANDERING TO THE ECOLOGICAL by Colin James
At the staff promotion it was someone's idea to herd wild antelopes through a narrow pass into a hastily built stockade. But those animals can jump, and did killing several office workers instantly. Mrs. Newman who collected the office fund was the slowest running almost posthumously, and an intern we weren't sure really existed anyway. The big boss down from corporate, stood on a boulder screaming into a megaphone. He had the look of conviction in those blue eyes. Anuja Ghimire is from Kathmandu, Nepal. She lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband and two little children and writes poetry. A Pushcart nominee, she has been published in several literary journals like Red River Review, Shot Glass Journal, Right Hand Pointing, Cyclamens and Swords. More poems can be found in her blog saffronandsymmetry.tumblr.com Forgiveness Ritual by Anuja Ghimire Come as an earthen pot brimming with pure milk Ready to quench the stone bull who has squatted for centuries Bring a garland of daffodils spun with your own hands Early the sparrows have left the branches and dropped the leaves Listen the vermillion should be redder than the crevices of my heart Remember the saffron should be ready to cover the holes in the air Know the forehead is cleansed for worship with dewdrops and uncreased of the past Leave the hide of your sandals; they will only crush the petals Let your uncurled toes earn the steps to the statue Hand over the basket with the offering to the ground Give only a moment of your presence in truth Leave with forgiveness in your open palms or Stay Palimpsest by Anuja Ghimire These footsteps do not leave traces The trails wash away with tears Falling from the eyes huddled over the soil On which I first crawled and softly trode Earth, you aren’t ours in equal parts These eyes are somehow less on our faces How are shrinking beings witnesses? The flash only blinds waterfalls from a higher mountain Stars, why don’t you migrate over greater sorrows? The light you bend on our wounds does not reflect Oh, clouds, your shadows are as dark as the furnace Forever, a power outage and a whimpering, dying rage Lower truths of these scabs that become the palimpsest Sun, why give us night and day? As if we will forget, this fate will change, and we will have a say Stanley Kaplan has published poetry in a number of journals, including Onthebus, Midstream, Chiron Review, Ragazine, Mobius and Quiet Courage with others forthcoming. He lives in New York City where he paints as well as writes. He is the recipient of a Pollack- Krasner Foundation grant. His paintings can be seen on their web site, pkf.org THE ANXIOUS SUPPLICANT by Stanley Kaplan Defining corners, edges, still things disappear. The witness roustabout reorders the century, curating bones and basics. The stars fold and unfold. And the anxious supplicant is afraid of the dark. ROUNDELAY by Stanley Kaplan What provender is provided the routine spirit. The roundelay sung to the end of the sound is an atonal artifact. Wither the secluded man? The celebrated fan banging pots and pans, who jigs on Jay's show. When he ascended from the cellar, he wept publicly on Chanel Four. GIDDY SECONDS by Stanley Kaplan
I had no objection to sending the money, but requisitioning a formal demand! Spit on the devil and see where it gets you. I had no objective in mind, except to be ostentatiously kind. I had no mind. Increasingly the illness had set in. The giddy seconds. The lesson plan from the city of Cinabar said that it would take two years to reach the Sprightly Falls. Two years! We summarize a life. Who was that coffin I saw you with last night? That was no coffin that was the balm of gratitude. Rony Nair works as an oil and gas Risk Management consultant. He’s been 20 years in the industry since starting off as an Industrial engineer a long time ago. Extensively traveled. Dangers fronted often. But that’s his day job. The one that pays for bread and bills. He’s been a worshipper at the altar of prose and poetry for almost as long as he could think. They have been the shadows of his life. (They’ve been) the bedsit at the end of a long day; the repository that does the sound of silence inimitably well. Not unlike a pet; but with one core difference- the books do suggest, educate and weave a texture that marginally provides streams of thought that are new. And one of the biggest pleasures of his life, is certainly holding a treasured edition in one’s hands. Physically. Rony’s been writing poetry since 1985 and was a published columnist with the Indian Express in the early 1990’s. He is also a professional photographer about to hold his first major exhibition and has previously been published by New Asian Writing (NAW), Semaphore, The Cadet, The Economic Times and YES magazine. Rony has been profiled by the Economic Times of Delhi. He cites V.S Naipaul, A.J Cronin, Patrick Hamilton, Alan Sillitoe, John Braine and Nevil Shute in addition to FS Fitzgerald as influences on his life; and Philip Larkin, Dom Moraes and Ted Hughes as his personal poetry idols. Larkin’s’ collected poems would be the one book he would like to die with. When the poems perish. As do the thoughts! FLICKS AT 41 by Rony Nair flicks at 41 lean to the side as a bat swing takes you away for that moment when you forget that ache, the finality of the rejection, the turning away. the urge to seek the toilet seat and retch as the ball comes into view again and the bat swings at your 3d head and misses where you hope it’d hit and India sneak a rare win. as then the ache hits you. Blocked on LinkedIn too. i mean, your enemies wouldn't bother. She would. USE AND THROW by Rony Nair there's always the wait, in connections, that have turned away. Redundant, in a global age. where you're drawn closer, and then spat out. like the gutter. the vomit a guilty pleasure to use. And throw. it is always the one who discards, that is loved. BATTERIES by Rony Nair would transitory memory be better or batter for the actuate the real. who remembers places revisited other than the emotional spike of it all when you glimpse a letter or trail that leads me back to where it all began round a culvert inside a bend with you on one side and at the other side, The end. TOTEM POLES AND BIRD SANCTUARIES by Rony Nair the old totem poles an imagined sanctuary. the birds still know it all. the views from the station look like that day. your favorite corner was rancid. Alone. Extant. I remembered the tale the movie “chamatkaar” take an actress saying no when she meant yes. the only question then, was when! the birds could look after themselves. It’s different now the same birds stay on. They linger. They rub it in. The birds still give me the bird. And you are of course, long gone. COREY MESLER has published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and Esquire/Narrative. He has published 8 novels, 4 short story collections, numerous chapbooks, and 5 full-length poetry collections. His latest novel, Memphis Movie, is from Soft Skull Press. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart many times, and 2 of his poems were chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. With his wife he runs a bookstore in Memphis. He can be found at https://coreymesler.wordpress.com. As I Fall so Falls Niagara Falls by Corey Mesler “Something for us is pouring now more than Niagara pouring.” --Walt Whitman Born in Niagara Falls, American side, on the edge of two great countries: one vast, placid and cold, one mean, fiery, full of freedom and war lust. Which is most in me? Which blood is my blood? I only know that at night, when I look to the fathomless stars, I see black between black, light that is weak but penetrating, and I know that in me, there is falling; there is a roar, not unlike a river of blood, going over and over the edge. My head was turned by Corey Mesler My head was turned. I did not see the world change utterly. I took advantage of the e- clipse to picture you silvery and cold. Your eye was on the vapor trails of different planes. I walked out onto the highway, naked but for my cup, and asked the first speeding maniac for a lift. The kind I had in mind was per- manent, last and lasting, a real spooky ending. Simple Pleasures by Corey Mesler
There are simple pleasures the priests tell me as I make my way down the stony path to find the water, alive, laughing, and delicate. There are thorns also. This I learned from the beasts of the field. Their lessons are more severe and harder to decipher. I wait at the gate for you and, in my hand, are the flowers the field told me were the finest. Coming up the road, anticipating my face, I see you smile and I hold the flowers to my nose to welcome you like the wind. Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Commonweal, Guwahatian Magazine (India), The Galway Review (Ireland), Public Republic (Bulgaria), The Osprey Review (Wales), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey) and other magazines. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.dpbs (Photo: Carol Bales) THE HONEY ROOM by Donal Mahoney Brother Al, in his hood, is out in his field making love to his bees. From my room I can see him move through his hives the way people should move among people. The bees give him gold and the gold turns orange in the jars that he sells in a room near the door of the abbey. The Honey Room, everyone calls it. Besides Brother Al, only I go into that room full of honey. I go in there and bend and look through the jars on the shelves and the sills till there in the orange I see Sue standing straight in a field of her own with a smile for our garland of children. IN BREAK FORMATION by Donal Mahoney
The indications used to come like movie fighter planes in break formation, one by one, the perfect plummet, down and out. This time they’re slower. But after supper, when I hear her in the kitchen hum again, hum higher, higher, till my ears are numb, I remember how it was the last time: how she hummed to Aramaic peaks, flung supper plates across the kitchen till I brought her by the shoulders humming to the chair. I remember how the final days her eyelids, operating on their own, rose and fell, how she strolled among the children, winding tractors, hugging dolls, how finally I phoned and had them come again, how I walked behind them as they took her by the shoulders, house dress in the breeze, slowly down the walk and to the curbing, how I watched them bend her in the back seat of the squad again, how I watched them pull away and heard again the parliament of neighbors talking. Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press). Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays (Winter Goose Publishing). Perceptions, Fault Lines and Tremors will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. Conditioned Response (Nazar Look). Blossoms of Decay will be published by Nazar Look. Resonance will be published by Dreaming Big Press. His novels include: Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press) Acts of Defiance (Artema Press). Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing). His short story collection, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City. (Photo by Nancy Beck) TRANSITIONS by Gary Beck UNKNOWN FUTURE I do not fear that I will cease to be, having consumed enough fear in my anguished lifetime to drown my sensibilities in a flood of denials. So whatever comes next, nothingness, (beyond my comprehension except intellectually), some conception that may resemble other's speculations. Yet I can't visualize a meaningful afterlife, though it might be nice to be a kindly angel helping those in need, but there is too much rust in my troubled days for me to get wings. So my only hope is to finish earthly chores before departure. DISCARDED DREAMS Temporal pleasures are fleeting, yet while they occur more than compensate for endemic frustration of lofty ambitions fueled by animate desires, thwarted by reality, consigning expectations to the furnace of failure PERSIST
Between a birth and a death all our expectations are subject to winds of change. The paths we assume will bring a better life can only be realized if we escape disaster. War, plague, famine, flood, interject disruptions of daily continuation. So only survivors pick up the pieces of shattered tranquility, resume the struggle to endure coincidence, fate, destiny, act of ---, without surrendering to beckoning despair. Fiction writer, poet, and playwright J. J. Steinfeld lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published sixteen books, including Our Hero in the Cradle of Confederation (Novel, Pottersfield Press), Disturbing Identities (Stories, Ekstasis Editions), Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), Anton Chekhov Was Never in Charlottetown (Stories, Gaspereau Press), Would You Hide Me? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), An Affection for Precipices (Poetry, Serengeti Press), Misshapenness (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions), Identity Dreams and Memory Sounds (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions), and Madhouses in Heaven, Castles in Hell (Stories, Ekstasis Editions). His short stories and poems have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies internationally, and over forty of his one-act plays and a handful of full-length plays have been performed in Canada and the United States. THE STORYTELLER’S EDUCATION by J. J. Steinfeld learning love songs from a cynic of love learning immortality from a forgotten ancestor learning perfect one-liners from a tongueless mime learning time-telling from a timeless beauty learning disbelief from a steadfast believer learning high-jumping from a legless dreamer learning dreaming from the sleepless coward learning to count the days from the fingerless conjurer learning unscathed escape from the spider-webbed insect learning disappearing from the magician’s sad rabbit WHAT IS YOUR CONCLUSION? by J. J. Steinfeld
A man who looks like a woman perhaps a woman who looks like a man difficult to tell from this distance this distorting time of the evening the light practising deception this mysterious man or woman raises both arms toward the sky and starts to pray in a voice that sounds neither male nor female a storm is starting and the sound is being competed with by self-centred winds that can upstage the firmest performer. I listen, attempt to collect words from the air but the winds do not relent, envious of those who pray during storms, and I am left standing in confusion and displacement. Tomorrow, the forecast is less treacherous, and I will move closer to those defying the winds. Thea Schiller, a Long Islander from New York, holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from The City University of New York, and an MS in counseling from Western Connecticut State University. For over two decades she spent her summers abroad in France with her late husband and daughter. She is the Orchard Prize winner for her poem, “Sarah" published in Furrow, University of Wisconsin, and has been published in other University literary presses. Currently, she lives in Westchester, practices psychotherapy in Connecticut and is writing her first novel. EXPERIENTIAL HOPE by Thea Schiller I am fancy constrained. The knotted love besotted gone. Exotic senses from my youth restrained. The long way back to return defies refined. The knotted love besotted gone. I dream cool nights can burn the bind. The long way back to return defies refined. I miss my youthful entanglements sine qua non. I dream cool nights can burn the bind. The beauty of our art fires, flees, and pleads. I miss my youthful entanglements sine qua non. Remembrance of our magic protects its ease. The beauty of our art fires, flees, and pleads, I am fancy constrained. Remembrance of our magic protects its ease, Exotic senses from my youth no longer restrained. MANNY by Thea Schiller
He is already on the cruise waiting for me with packed bags, wearing his blue felt sombrero we bought in Cancun five years ago. Toasting me with champagne by the rail, he says, “Darling take your walk, I know how you love the first snow fall.” I’m rushing, the taxi is late; I’m sweating. I can’t find my best bra to wear under the green moss dress he loved to touch. The telephone rings; it’s our daughter agonizing over the GRE’s, and I’m wishing he were here. I run away from her call, consumed in the absence of words to comfort. ‘And where the _______,’ (I almost curse) in case I want to write a poem. It’s 4:00 am and the cruise is departing, and I weep knowing I can’t transcend water and sky. Harambee Grey-Sun: My poetry has appeared in a handful of literary journals, including CrossConnect, Epicenter, RiverSedge, the South Carolina Review, theSquaw Valley Review, and the Wisconsin Review. I am the author of Wine Songs, Vinegar Verses and Spring’s Fall (Autumn Numbers, Book I). I am also an alumnus of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. OUR SAVED AND SOVEREIGN EMPIRE by Harambee Grey-Sun All of us here mired in Heaven may safely shut our eyes, taking advantage of the unsuspecting quiet ones, spun out of the rare caring guardians’ orbit and into an immature satire of nature, an artless work intended to make a mess of the rotating stages. Children, kill your parents. Adults, don’t have kids. Poorly put, but moral taught. Boys and girls, even though heavily armed with double-edged grudges, will ease away from the extremes and settle in the muddle—the Fear of Love, chilled and instilled while they’re odd and young-- promising us Archangels unending evenings embracing the unchanging, faceless dark. DISPLACE. REMODIFY. By Harambee Grey-Sun
There are no homeless in the airport, only the bewildered and indignant with certain insecurities concerning time zones, destinations. The guttural cries of children, agonies of adults subjected to turbulent shifts in plans, our moaning cushioned with threats about what will happen when the unexpected happens yet again. We all may as well be dressed in sackcloth, faceless, carping prophets in a land untraced by divinities, made less and less as we jostle and shuffle through the gates down the tunnel with a dim, cramped cabin at its end. But we adapt to our new surroundings, distract what’s left of ourselves with wireless gadgets, against all stressed advice about ensuring safety. In reality, the devices we hold and the vices we swear we don’t all have tendrils digging in, entwining blood vessels and nerves, which tighten and jerk during taxi, then tremble upon the realization God is an adverb waiting for us. |
Categories
All
|