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.

               PRAM TO PRANK
 
A big ado admonish. Confess you threw the confetti. 
You, a trobriander trudged to school.
Scout, scramble, forget everything, because your
potluck life ran from pram to prank. Your opera is
opaque.
 
 
            QUINTET IN QUARTER NOTES
 
Good and Plenty consecrated her quintet in quarter notes. The atonality quibbled with every
quick shift while she shunted two parts together. Drinking port, she shoveled note upon note.
Shrapnel sounds, musical tidbits discharged into the air, stunned and clattered.The harmonious
clink clenched and called us home.

D.G. Geis divides his time between Houston and the Hill Country of Central Texas. He has an undergraduate degree in English Literature from the University of Houston and a graduate degree in philosophy from California State University. His poetry has appeared in 491 Magazine, Lost Coast, Blue Bonnet Review,The Broadkill Review, A Quiet Courage, SoftBlow International Poetry Journal, Blinders, Burningword Literary Journal, Poetry Scotland (Open Mouse), and Crosswinds,   He will be featured in a forthcoming Tupelo Press chapbook anthologizing  9 New Poets and is winner of Blue Bonnet Review's Fall 2015 Poetry Contest.

    Tips on how to choose clothing for the deceased.

Something dark is best.
Perhaps a Sunday suit

or formal business attire.
Something you might wear

for a special occasion--
like interviewing for a new job.

Your new position 
will require a certain panache.

Stiff determination 
and a resolute smile

should make a lasting impression
on your new Employer.

Later, as your suit empties
and you fade slowly

into the woodwork,
it will come to you

how deep 
life’s roots really run--

two of which
are already knocking, 

discreetly,
at your new front door. 


             Puppet Show

This Potemkin village barely stands.
Even the slightest breeze shakes its walls.
Look closely and you can see the seams 
Where the set designer joined them together.

There are no actors or extras, only half-dressed
Manikins beckoning from storefront windows like
Whores in Amsterdam—and, of course, standing 
On the sidewalk, cash in hand, their customers. 

Behind the curtain, standing in the wings, is Pinocchio,
Nose sharpened into a pencil, palms open, moving
Now to center stage, eyes on the audience, back to his 
Maker, waiting for the first tug of the strings that will 

Very shortly 

Move his enormous painted mouth.

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

             LITTLE JOHNNY'S GOT THE BLUES
 
It's almost midnight.
It's quiet out
but for an oak branch
that taps upon his bedroom window.
 
From the small radio
plugged to his ear,
a disc jockey, three states away,
spins old southern blues records,
rough and raw, whiskey-stained,
aural wizardry
to a white kid in the upper Midwest.
 
His father's playing poker with his buddies.
His mother's drunk on the couch.
Theirs is a strung out kind of blues.
Not three chords and a growl.
More red faces and raised voices.
 
Mississippi John Hurt is wailing
"Spike Driver Blues."
In the pain of that leather throat,
a railroad's being built
on the backs of poor black men.
That sounds nothing like
the ache from a belt across the legs...
until, by the second verse, it does.
 
  
  
                    BEAR COUNTRY
 
Nightfall, I'm back
from a jaunt through
the land of the grizzly.
Behind me,
woods have turned black,
mountains melted into sky.
I made noise the whole way
so the bears knew that I was coming.
I saw one in the distance,
drinking at a pond.
I did not go in that direction.
 
As much as I love nature,
I'm aware that, being human
bestows on me a mental superiority
but not a physical one.
Should one of those great creatures
decide to take me on,
what chance has acuity
against rapacious claws, sharp teeth.
 
I'm back at my den
turn on all lights,
report to the kitchen
where with a cut of meat,
a slice of bread,
locked doors and windows,
I'm returned temporarily
to the top of the food chain.
 
 
 
 

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.

​            Eternal Snowfall


Sartre said,
There is “No Exit.”
Two morning doves defy winter.
The son turns East on the icy branch and prays.
The mother bird puffs up her beige chest one last time;
God’s  flakes  fall full and translucent.

Crystal diamonds open up the promise of world
Beyond isolation into memory.
Hope expands past personal stores into Kingdom,
Beyond Sartre and literature
To find entrance.

 James Croal Jackson lives in Columbus, Ohio. He spent a few years in Los Angeles working in the film industry, but now he releases electronic rap albums under the pseudonym 'Layzerus'. You can find some of his poems at jimjakk.com.

                        Again
 
For two weeks I bathed deep in the sweat of whiskey.
Submerged vocals yawed to 3am caresses together, together.
 
The silken bed turns itself over, its base an earthquake.
Listerine breath hurls to vortex the two years of refraining
 
from the holy riptide– how its arms reach
and withdraw, reach and withdraw.
 
You would drown in the salt of married shells,
sheathe your crackled forearm in the tide's tattoo.
 
You would let it embrace and clear
your pearls. Thus begins the tide anew.



      The Photograph Was a Drunken Winter
 
slackened falls into chaos: each plod
a sobering imprint on snow
 
buzzing cavernous hearts 
white honey swathes the air
 
the dewdrop pale of her shirt, arms curved
from the door in bent-seven candles, icicled
 
waxen breath hissing this
is the moment sculptured to ice:
 
a future with gluey trees barren at night,
tongues born licking telephone poles
 
static moments stretched to angel hair
feel like rare dreams caught in dim light



            Night Chill
 
in the vacant living room
our packed boxes never touched,
black mold assumes the ceiling fan.
it awakens every morning
wanting to spin,
 
to slice into the air
with its fine blades
 
a surgery of breathing
 
and the chest waits
for your steady palm
to resuscitate
 
those numb nights,
when our billowed heat
cooled our voluminous bits
 
 
 
                  Arrival
 
We were the hardwood floor. Cold squeaks,
outstretched panther palm, red hand,
 
expected the chlorine. Wax splashed
baby oil eyes and it is citrus– cinnamon, acidic.
 
Where we were wanted, the pitchfork path
and jagged rim,
 
this fungus crust metastasis, you twirl
and twirl your index finger until it leaves.
 

                  Pretzel
 
we bend and fold to keep
some memories alive
 
we with our doughy cores–
salty to the lick–
  
rose and contracted,
twisted into rope,
 
into ebb and echo, ripples
of the faintest caress,
 
fingers forever
indented on the crust
 

Elizabeth S. Wolf lives in MA with her daughter and several pets, where she maintains a day job as a Technical Metadata Librarian. Elizabeth has previously published poems in local anthologies (Merrimac Mic: Gleanings from the First Year; 30 Poems in November 2014; Amherst Storybook Project).  The Amherst Storybook Project is published in print and on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6d3pUd8jR0

​Grateful for Good Neighbors
for Tom and Marge Crosby

Thank you, kind sir. You saw
something not right- a child?
a doll?- tossed awkwardly in a
pile of leaves. But what’s important 

is this: you stopped. You went back. 
Out of your way, late for work, 
you listened to that little voice- 
something is not right- and you found

a small girl. A toddler, naked and weary,
burned and bruised- tortured- alone-
in that pile of wet leaves. And you and your wife,
you gathered that child up, in your
arms, in your coat, and you brought that
baby home. Thank you. In a crazy mad world

we are told to look for the helpers. And you,
you and your wife, on that morning, by that act,
you saved a small girl, and also
a shred of my soul. 

**
This poem was inspired by a local news story:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/2015/11/23/the-parents-the-kidnapped-hamilton-girl-are-thanking-those-who-helped-find-her/7kwB5yeLKsL0fnEX2VC48N/story.html


The Inside Scoop  
                                    
If I decide to tell you what I see, 
would you love me still?
Trapped tumbling inside are
my comrades from the madhouse: 
the woman who swore 
invisible poodles pooped 
on the rugs. She swore, in her pink
tattered robe, ragged fringes                   
framing her face; she stared 
from under chunks of eye liner, 
stale streaks of blue eye shadow,
stared and saw poodles by the                   
the country club pool, where her 
soon- to- be ex- husband and her 
ex- nanny lay stretched beside her
children, the babies she had born, 
panting and pushing and 
crowning, children who feared her 
now, who lay safely outside, 
in the sun. Here in the hallways 
a skeleton is staring, drugged eyes 
sunk in bony sockets; he tried to 
starve himself, wasted away to
nearly nothing; now he munches
rye toast, walking slowly on skinny 
white legs, leaving a trail of
dry crumbs; walks passed the jew who 
decided one night that he was 
the true jesus, who walked out
barefoot through the snow,
proclaiming his message and all
that was divine; who was carried in
raving and now sits rocking, rocking,
rocking, cradling feet swathed in 
white bandages, covering blackened
frostbitten skin, nearly lost
toes; he believes the doctors from
the ER drained all of his
powers, all of his divine love;
he seeks his debrided skin as if
the shredded scales are holy, as if
he could still be saved. 

Salvation. Lo I have seen
the writing on the wall,
heard the silent scream, 
lunched with 
the hollow men, 
the stuffed men. So
will you, won’t you, 
will you, won’t you,
come and join the dance?
Just this morning I noticed
the door was ajar.
                   
**
The opening line of this poem was inspired by "If I were to tell you what I see, would you love me still?" from: A Case Against Old Habits, Janet Longe Sadler, Amherst Writers and Artists Press
​
Sorrowing

Back and forth,
back and forth.
Oh how I love to go
up in a swing,
up in the sky so blue.

Three years old,
three years old.
Yesterday he was
laughing laughing laughing
at the little dog
with an upturned tail.
Mummy we can see
where he goes poopie!

Back and forth,
back and forth.
Oh how I love to go
up in a swing,
up in the sky so blue.

Mummy mummy mummy
I can’t breathe. The wheeze,
the cough, the wide
terrified eyes,
lips turning blue.
Mummy mummy mummy
where my medicine?

Back and forth,
back and forth.
Oh how I love to go
up in a swing,
up in the sky so blue.

To the park! His very 
favorite place. Over there 
we look for dandelions,  we
puff and blow off all 
the fluff. Here in summer,
the sprinkler comes on.
Look at me, mummy. 
Look at me! Look!

There’s where he toddled 
at two, chasing bubbles,
on stubby chubby legs. 
Here’s where he fell
on his pampered butt,
looking so surprised.

Back and forth,
back and forth.
Oh how I love to go
up in a swing,
up in the sky so blue.

Yesterday she looked
everywhere, everywhere,
couch cushions flying,
bathroom cabinets
flung open, drawers 
overturned.  Where is 
the inhaler. Where is
the epi pen. Mother of God,
where is your Child:
please let my baby
breathe.

Back and forth,
back and forth.
Oh how I love to go
up in a swing,
up in the sky so blue.

She dressed him in 
his Blue’s Clues shirt.
She dressed him in
his red red shorts.
She carried him down
to his favorite park
to the swing he used
as a baby; the swing
with a seatbelt to 
hold him in.  Back and
forth. She sang. She
prayed. When the sun 
went down, she recited 


Goodnight Moon: 
In the great green room
was a telephone, 
and a red balloon…

Back and forth.
He is not giggling.
Back and forth.
He is not pumping 
his sturdy legs;
back and forth
not tossing his shoes
into the grass;
back and forth
he is not breathing
back and forth
Mummy’s best boy
back and forth
keeping in rhythm
back and forth
just the two of us
back and forth
up and down
Mummy and son 
forever and ever,
amen.

Dawn came. The coffee truck 
opened for business.

The police came.

The neighbors watched
from a few feet away.
The baby left on a stretcher,
the sheet pulled up
over his head. The momma went
in another car
to a different place.
Somewhere nobody ever
wanted to go.

Goodnight moon.
Goodnight air.
Goodnight noises everywhere.

Goodnight baby.
Mummy loves you
now and forever,
my little angel.
Amen.



**
Sorrowing was inspired by a story in the Washington Post in May 2015. The events in the poem are completely fictional; I have not followed the continuing story in the news.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/mother-found-pushing-dead-three-year-old-on-a-swing-in-md-park/2015/05/22/b2acd6fe-00b6-11e5-805c-c3f407e5a9e9_story.html

​
Germanwings 9525
24 March 2015

It was a mild mid- morning in March
when the plane, after a short delay, took off
from Barcelona. There were 56 empty
seats; there were 144 passengers
on board; there were 6 crew members. 
There were no survivors.

There were 16 German high school students
heading home that Tuesday. Sixteen lives on the cusp,
aborted. The girl in row 16 sobbed,
wished she had kissed that boy who stared at her,
wished she had hugged her mother and not
turned away, not refused to let her mother help
pack and carry her bag.  Iche liebe meine
mutter, she says, over and over, her stomach in her
ears, her ears throbbing, now she is screaming,
I love my mother.

The pilot knocks at the 
locked cockpit door.
The copilot breathes steadily 
in silence.

The baby in row 11 wails.
His ears hurt, thinks the mama.
She starts to shush and rock her child.
The papa points out the window
with a shaking hand. Look.
Now the mama rocks and prays,
singing the lullaby her mama sang to her:
Sleep, baby, sleep.
Sleep, baby, sleep.
She calls on all of the angels of God
to spare her only child.
If this impossible thing is happening
maybe a miracle is possible too.


The businessman in seat 3A gives up
doodling on his expense report
and cries for the child that 
he won’t see grow up; for the wife
he won’t kiss again; for ever leaving home
for a stupid business trip. The businessman thanks God 
for life insurance, hopes that his wife never finds
those pictures tucked up and zipped into 
his briefcase pocket: Please, God, 
spare her that. And mama, 
meine gelibte mutter,
I love you.

The pilot backs up,
lunges at the unrelenting door.
The copilot breathes steadily
in silence.

The retired grandma in row 22
closes her eyes
thanks heaven for this last week
with the children
and their children, precious
kindele; she wings a prayer 
to her best friend through all these
last long years; remembers 
being fond of her husband, 
and prepares to meet him
and her blessed mother
when the plane plunges 
into the blanket of snow
spread over the rugged mountains.

The bass baritone in row 9,
whose honeyed low notes
resonated with dramatic emotion,
is reduced to sobbing and calling out
for Ave Maria, 
Mother of God.


The pilot shouts orders and codes,
thrashing at the door.
The copilot breathes steadily
in silence.

The stewardesses hug each other.
They know crash position
won’t do a damn thing.
They think of the hours spent
trying to identify the enemy in the crowd
while all along evil
was standing beside them,
in uniform. And this is how
it will end.
The high school boy in row 17
is sorry that insisting on sex
ever made Annika cry;
hopes his father remembers
how proud he was
when he made that basket at the buzzer,
and when he stood up to those
jerks at the park, even though
the kid they were picking on
really was a dork. 

The pilot steadies himself
pictures his mother, young and
tender and sleepy, tucking him
back into bed. He apologizes for 
his hubris. The pilot, bellowing,
tries to overthrow fate
but he can’t.

The baby in row 33 puts her hands
to her ears and shrieks. Her mama
screams too, counting her rosaries
on baby’s flexed toes,
begging forgiveness
for minor forgettable sins.


The copilot, breathing steadily
in silence, disables all alarms
overrides auto-corrections
and recalibrates 
his deliberate descent.

The American mother and daughter in row 27
clutch hands as the earth hurtles closer;
the mother closes her eyes, refuses to believe;
the daughter screams “What is happening?”
over and over, as if
translating into a different language could
change the certain course.

The unthinkable happens:
 the plane crashes in flames.

For days the crews search at the Ravin de Rose´,
melted snow refrozen around
chunks of char and melted metal. They find
scattered teeth and bones. They report 
headaches, some nausea, some 
shortness of breath. Possibly
high altitude sickness; the plane 
hit the mountain at 5,000 feet. Possibly
the sudden release of 150 souls
returned to stardust and ash. 
At night the inspector from the local village
goes home, scrubs away the grit and
warms his hands; climbs into bed
giving thanks for his home and family, 
for the mother who loved him and the father
who raised him to be the kind of man 
who walks into the wreckage of hell and 
tries to mend it, or at least
comprehend. He prays for a dreamless sleep, 
but awakens again and again
to the phantom cries
of the anguished pilot
banging 
on the cockpit door. 

The reporter on the spot
once so jaded and cynical
always good for another round of drinks
sets aside his cell phone
ceasing to follow and retweet;
turns off the TV with captions
the radio with constant commentary, 
and closing his tired eyes, thinks back 
to the last time he told his mother 
he loved her; the last time
he saluted his father, lost in
old stories of a forgotten, predictable 
war. The reporter is haunted
by the madness of the copilot
breathing steadily, in silence,
for the 10 long minutes
he dove towards destruction.
The restless reporter 
feels his lips moving in prayer
for the eternal salvation
of the pilot 
blocked
by the locked cockpit door.

**
This poem was inspired by the widely reported actual crash in March 2015. The occupations and ages of the passengers, type of plane, site of the crash, and actions of the pilot and copilot are taken from news stories or twitter. The thoughts of the passengers and crew are solely fiction. 

Marie Kilroy has recently been published in Allegro Poetry Magazine, Loveliest Magazine and the Lummox Press. She graduated from the University of Mary Washington with a B.A. in English and lives in New York City.

                               Desert Seeds 
 
“…things and animals – and our enjoyment of it is so indescribably beautiful and rich only because it is full of inherited memories of the engendering and birthing of millions. In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love come to life again and fill it with majesty and exaltation.” – Rilke
 
I lie flat against the flat Mexican plateau.
The cacti’s silhouettes
stand silently in the sunset like soldiers,
arms raised skyward.
 
In the early evening the stars flood in like girls in Quinceañera gowns,
grasshopper salt on their shiny lips,
and they float above on the sky’s dance floor
as the volcano with its icy hat
puffs his pipe to greet them.
 
Rilke believed in a future poet who comes
to say the ecstasies that are unsayable.
I believe him and the owl uttering words
I cannot repeat. The black witch moth’s
seven inch wingspan sets in motion a fire
on the coast. Small animal skeletons litter the sand
like diamonds on a rich woman’s arm. We are all birthing all the time.
I vow to love it all, even the solitude. I can see the seeds alight
in the wind, birds to new births, the world over
in majesty and exaltation.
 


                                     City Swan
 
In the late evening in Central Park lies the edge of the lake--
glowing in the little light from the moon
lies the swan, from song to silence and stuck in the little laps
of water against earth, beak tucked in a U
as if she was trying to un-see,
to look around the still-rooted trees
in their black gowns like willows at a funeral
mystical, ethereal in gossamer nightshade
the feathers still satin, the wings unfolded, leaving her round body exposed,
her tiny feet in mud –
O, mythological Swan; O regal Swan—felled, felled--
A homeless man laughs at the sight—“That’s what’s next!!”
and pees into the grass, stance askance
the vinegar smell, a fog smoking upwards in the branches--
her body hardening against the soft waves.
 
 

​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 Alligator's Approach to the Birds

It is not for everyone,
    this Paradise of Birds       
The wingless ones who stand beneath the shade-cover 
             on the boardwalk pavilion
are given leave to watch,
a dozen brown and watery feet away, 
the color of old trees glimpsed in a window's reflections,
bits of shell and water-eaten leafage at the base

We'll get no closer
The birds know how to measure distance --
    and ability, we have no wings to fly --
They land on a dime, on a dollar-sized island
We stand on ceremony,
the gnawing anxiety of wet feet,
as if water itself were toxic
We are lingering glances and superannuated vigilance
But eyes cannot hurt them
We pose no threat to the Paradise of Birds

Who brings the stork's babies? 
We question one another 
A head like the curve of an umbrella handle 
    turned upside down,
The wood stork is patterned silk on top,
yards of plump white plumage below 
Its young both indescribable and hard to glimpse

Not half-brown like the Anhinga,
whose adolescents are caramel feathered 
and bear allegiance to a race of beige and mustard-colored snake people 
and live below the waters now 
in a world we cannot see
We satisfy our craving for vision with the Paradise of Birds

Birds, we know, are merely people
    in a different dress
(though cannot the same be said of trees?)
They too enjoy a fine March day
in the face of a smiling sun, fish a-plenty
(where we live no such days exist)
They toy with the furniture inside their nests,
adjust the framing, smooth the slipcovers,
content to ignore the squawks of the babes 
    demanding to be fed

They are beyond such needs 
    in weather like this --
pellucid, clear as glass, free of insects and parasites,
holding wings high to dry in the sun
like Washing Day in some earlier century 
(though without the elbow grease)
all pleasure, no work

They are nature's machines for turning air and water
    into the grace of flight
that miracle of which we are always bereft,
banned forever from the Paradise of Birds

The herons, winged heroes, glitter-glide besides the humans,
aging creatures who crave to worship 
    in the glow of their beauty
Who will fly only when they leave 
    this heavier career behind one final time,
seeking in immaterial flight some greater good 
(seeking entrance then 
    to the Paradise of Birds)

Who now fly only eyes closed, limbs inert
in the phantasms of the liberated chambers of the brain,
    those rooms they cannot decorate or conform to will
Who soar only in their minds, 
    their mind's eye of stimulus and love
Who gaze with longing, and 
    wonder 
at the Paradise of Birds

2.
Only one beast disturbs the Paradise of Birds
It syncopates the water
    in brownish segments
a disturbance in the watercolor
    as if old paint got up to walk

It motors in silence,
like appetite
or time, or the silent renewal of 
    solid earth beneath your feet
Arrives like surprise
Like thought made visible,
an idea given shape
Like Hegel's notion of history
a submerged and troubled mass forming for revolt

Yet though subtle as a reptile
its metrics are known 
by those clear-eyed cousins roosting 
    in the bare tops of the cypress trees,
mere skeletal frames and furniture 
    for the Paradise of Birds

And when the stick-legged guardians of heaven, their rapiers
    in their faces,
their light and parried weaponry
tied snuggly to their brains
espy the ancient enemy
They hoot their worries, in airy segmentation,
a ceaseless one-two-three,
warning all of the creature's trespass,

the reptile in the sally garden waters
    of the Paradise of Birds

                    Ecce Alieni
 
Night shadows, day shadows,
each of dissimilar nature;
being used to day shadows,
encountering friends, alter
egos, constant companions
of sunlit days; however,
night shadows are strangers,
soulless interlopers of dark.
 
Traveling through the
living room at two a.m.,
no lights, not wanting to
disturb a sleeping family;
encountering the alien
behind the Japanese screen,
three-legged, elongated
head, square-jawed, I’m
momentarily disarmed.
 
Slow realization arises;
new tripod telescope,
moved yesterday to clean,
but no less alien for all the
dawning awareness; then
stealing away with the scope
into the backyard, before
false dawn, pushing to
meet my fears.  Behold
the alien worlds above!

                         Judas Goat
 
Despised, reviled, vilified, his
                        infamy lingers
in myth and village folklore
                        used to shame
the too young and too old as
                        to the depths
of their betrayals of others’
                        certain trust.
 
But was it so? Was he set up?
                        Or prophesy fulfilled?
 
By some recounts he was a
                        pawn used
like some lamb or goat led to
                        future slaughter
almost as accounts in Old History
                        books  depict, but
brought forth into the New Light’s
                        redemptive history.
 
But was it so? Was he set up?
                        Or prophesy fulfilled?
 
As the robber on the right-hand
                        declaring belief,
forgiveness might have been
                        granted him
to sit at an ethereal table with
                        all others
who followed the journey of
                        distance and depth.
 
But if that’s so it was setup and
                        prophesy fulfilled –
 
Then such an unearthly slab
                        need be round,
slighting none of those seated of
                        plan or pardon
who, obligated by mandate to
                        do their part,
are rewarded for their resolve
                        and allegiance.
 
But if that’s so, it was setup and
                        prophesy fulfilled –
 
Thus, he should be a guest at
                        the Man’s table;
exonerated for having no say
                        in the matter
curbed of his free will to act
                        as he wanted,
shunning payment other than
                        to feast above.
 
More than on a technicality,
on a tree hangs his absolution.
 

Synchronicity
Jubilant robins’ chorus
Spring rain’s tremolo

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.

​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.

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

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.

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.

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.

D.G. Geis divides his time between Houston and the Hill Country of Central Texas. He has an undergraduate degree in English Literature from the University of Houston and a graduate degree in philosophy from California State University. His poetry has appeared in 491 Magazine, Lost Coast, Blue Bonnet Review,The Broadkill Review and A Quiet Courage. He will be featured in a forthcoming Tupelo Press chapbook anthologizing 9 New Poets and is also winner of Blue Bonnet Review's Fall 2015 Poetry Contest.

Dancing with the Stars by D.G. Geis
For Jeffrey Levine

There was that night 
you stood on the balcony 
and the stars counted you--

one of many squeaking things.
that smallness serves  
on a skinned plate.

Mr. Universe (an omnivore), 
did not have enough light 
to read the menu,

so he made a flashlight from your rib,  
and after he cooked it, 
he swallowed the rest of you whole.

Your skin he fashioned 
into a tattooed brick 
which he hurled 

through morning’s window.
And left you standing 
in daylight’s slippers

with morning’s coffee 
and a cigarette; 
as if nothing happened, 

as if you were invisible,
as if the smoke curling
around your fingers 

was the winter breath 
of a dazed runner 
or ash

from a starry crematorium.

​
​Texas Eagle by D.G. Geis

Between Mineola and Texarkana
      the mystery of trampolines 
      in the backyards of the poor

Outside St. Louis
     glass-eyed factories
     blinded by recession
     guided home by the kindness
     of power lines
     dieseled skank 
     the Mississippi 

     lifting her muddy skirt
          
Near Alton Illinois

     palsied farm houses
     shaking circles of bony elm 
    
     herefords in feedlots 
     waddling through duvets 
     of manure and snow

     skinned of corn
     detasseled fields 
     scabbed with ice

     sun hung over 
     retching behind a barn

At the Springfield Amtrak Station
     the buttoned down Amishman  
     sitting on a bench 
     calmly peeling an orange
     with a spoon. 

On the Illinois River outside Havana
    brick streets 
    red teeth rattling loose
    
    rusted cars hovering on blocks
    barges nudged by mothering tugs
    
    children shoving their way into a school bus
  
    the Ameren plant 
    night cleansing aerosol
    
    plumes of lengthening smoke

In Chicago 
 
    under the El
    two vagabonds making out
    on a Hefty bag
   
    Wheel of Fortune on Econolodge 
    lobby TV 

     night sting of streetlights
     morning yolk unbroken 
  

 dawn over easy

When dead friends appear by D.G. Geis

When dead friends appear
be kind enough to ask them in. 

They have traveled a long way
 and are doubtless tired. 

Be sure they have a comfortable place to sit
and remember the laws of hospitality. 

Perhaps a cup of coffee
or a carafe of wine. 

Inquire about their well being 
without being overly curious or intrusive. 

Trust their past with the same conviction 
you can trust your future. 

When they speak, listen carefully.
Be considerate of those still sleeping. 

It has been said attention 
is the purest form of generosity

and the only gift 
of the living to the dead. 

Never forget 
you will either be remembered or forgotten. 

Be thankful—be careful. 
There is nothing else. 

One day you will visit too. 

Robin Wyatt Dunn writes and teaches in Los Angeles.

​burnt out over the edge
an ember over the sun
burning luminous--
thrust fill and 'scape the earth
ash whirl round and out:
find out what where and who
for everything you are

​the little man pursues his dream behind his screen of death
shifting many things beneath his robe
the cope the dope the rope the soap the terrible burden of love
all colors and all mysteries are pasty white behind his eyes
the dry and life shred easily sighing their way with them:
hear me describe
hear me enliven
hear me divide his head from the screen:
here, boy, let me tell you:
it was a bad idea,
this little dream
come out
and in
this sin is nothing special
just provincial
this landscape knows no god and no device
it's alive

​and with a woman he stems out to find
the rule
the sooner tool
bray mound and roll
the earning of the luck
and the sterning of the fool into a warrior
no use but reuse
in the long bowl of the depression
and no winning but through terror
each your own
come in, and sit down
and be ready for the mull
of the engines
we bring you
now surround

​break mask and fail
take here the better staff to beat her in
the district cold cartoon and fled:
break the lost last and lust for better better better be
I die the right king underneath this singing

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

​LAYOVER: EMPRESS HOTEL by Charles Leggett
​
            outside Kuala Lumpur
This building rises nakedly up 
from rows of yellow three-story flats 

like an elegant wart from the crown
of a dentist’s hovering knuckle. 

Lurching half-hour’s drive from the airport; 
lobby and halls suffused in prayer 

chants piped in through a subtle P.A.  
system.  “Help in Time of Need” leads off 

the Gideons’ list of “Suggested 
Readings”  from the worn bible they’ve “Placed”

—next, as it happens, to The Teachings
of Buddha—in what I’ll call the drawer 

of need.  Now, techno dance beats debouch
from a stoop below, across the street,  

next door to Naeshan Trading, where men 
in t-shirts are hunched at card tables 

under a naked bulb’s margarine light. 
An equivocal phrase, “drawer of need”:  

drawn as a bath is drawn—immersion;
or sketched, in lines of a face—mundane, 

sweet, straining to become familiar
in a nakedness dressed to the nines.

THE AGENCY by Charles Leggett


Out here mumbling Poor Old Jason Bourne, 
his third installment warm still in the tray.
Turns out he’d signed up for it after all;
he’d plunked his dog tags down upon the table 
     like hotel keys at check-out.

Landlady’s stained, forsaken particle 
board stacked against the disused concrete planter,
raindrops licking coldly at everything
(two hours sitting on my ass inside’s
not helping with the cold.)—but it’s the clouds
     of smoke that catch my eye.

The hill’s tilt south down Franklin, freeway noise 
uncoiling, coiling; rocking back and forth 
on balls of chilly feet, not even sitting.
     Stealing the pleasure of smoke.



The waters Poor Old Jason Bourne began
     these movies in were cleaner.

They didn’t give Matt Damon time to act, 
much.  His Bourne takes action, as if that
were all the world had left to offer him.
Damon simply has to be precise, 
     to be himself the narrative.

They put that Poor Old Jason Bourne up on 
a rooftop at the movie’s end, allowing 
the breathless agent who has somehow managed
to corner him the choice of…well, of not
     shooting him right away.

Bourne’s had his brief and flashback-ripe reunion
with Albert Finney’s basso spymaster:
a version of Polonius stripped bare
without the foibles or loquaciousness
—albeit the pomposity remains.
(Polonius occurs because my mother
reminded me of him, three decades past,
advising me about my parentage.)
He doesn’t even have panache enough 
to die, this humorless, this dry, on-task, 
hermetic, old Polonius, his droll
pronouncements not a bit less obvious
     for all their rumbling portent.  

A spat of editorializing, then,
up on the rooftop, as to what’s been asked 
of these two men by their superiors
throughout the years; then Poor Old Jason Bourne (or
whatever name does manage to be his)
     jumps off into the river.  



I still can hear in the tenor of her voice,
and see by angles that her face described, 
the grace that conversation long ago
had asked of her.  That it would be all right, 
if I did want to know.  That I was free 
to seek the persons out.  Her tenderness, 
in saying that their feelings, hers and Dad’s, 
were not what mattered—not against the weight 
of that inquiry into a frightened 
woman (likely younger, giving birth, 
than I was when my mother spoke to me)
who carried me nine months and would have given
     me a different name.

STORY I TOLD MY MOTHER ON HER DEATH BED  
                                                      by Charles Leggett
​
“What happened?” comes a child’s voice ringing pure
From out among the patrons.  All can hear.

And I am Prospero (a summer tour            
Of parks), with beard and scepter, arms both flailing

From out a caftan, stormily regaling
My daughter with the tale of being thrown

From power to this “full poor” life she’s known.
And there’s a little present Shakespeare’s left,

A shortened line of verse, to catch one’s breath--
“What happened?” comes the child’s voice ringing then.



“What happened?” comes the same voice ringing when
Not ninety minutes later—all forgiven,

At revels’ end—falls one last grateful silence:
My daughter wending toward the changing tents

With old Alonso’s son.  And I imagine
How all upon that island—“salvage,” human

Or sprite; betrothed, bewildered (or a touch
Besotted)—at the end could say as much:

No longer captive, soon “reliev’d by prayer,”
What happened ringing through the solemn air.
I told my mother so, not two weeks later.
Could say as much.  And could not say it better.
    —Wooden O Free Shakespeare in the Parks, Seattle, WA, August 2001