Paul Ilechko was born in England but has lived most of his life in the USA. He currently lives in Lambertville, NJ with his girlfriend and a cat. He has at various times been a visual artist (painting and photography) and a writer of both short fiction and poetry. Paul has had poetry accepted by Ibis Head Review and the Peacock Journal, and short fiction by Grab-a-Nickel. Old Photograph on Facebook The curling edges of an antique monochrome, chemical imbalance trending to sepia tint, the acid reflex recoloring her eyes to brown. Under the magnolia tree, a whimsical smile. Cigarette smoldering as she tousles the head of the bedraggled child in hand-me-down pants. Electronic wizardry undreamt of in her time allows me to digest and regurgitate the image, sans stains or creases, pleading for admiration. A Plain House The hypotenuse slash of the fire escape carves the pale frontage into isosceles segments. Creamy stucco, rumpled as old newspaper, a desultory troweling of archaic proportion. The oblique diagonal of that serrated stairway, mirrored and repeated by the angular branching of an erect pin oak. Parallel lines, cleaving their architectural pantomime across the sky. Ornate metallurgy, whorled and curlicued beside the homely windows, adds a piquancy of Cajun flair to the Yankee drabness of the boxy house, unnoticed by the marauding tourist gangs. In the Gallery of my Mind The giant stalk of red broccoli stands disconsolate in the corner of the yard, overshadowing the deep blue ranch house. Each floret is a trunk, branching from the main stem at ground level. Acer Palmatum to those who know, Japanese Maple to the rest of us. I imagine it painted by Picasso. Executed in late cubist style: the red of the leaves and the blue of the house intermingle, each plane a refraction of some small glittering facet as seen from a specific angle. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I imagine it painted by Matisse. Brilliantly lucid in bright Fauve color, a shocking interaction of brilliant pigment, a riotous disdain for traditional notions of what a painting ought to consist of. In the foreground, there in the lower right, Madame Matisse relaxes in her chair. I imagine it painted by Paul Klee. A miniature in pure, clear watercolor, almost pointillist in execution. Framed by the white paper left untouched, a work of sublime beauty. It shines like a distant star, imbued with greater nuance than its minimal size might lead one to expect. I imagine it painted by Motherwell. A massive canvas, raw primer showing through between the blocky planes of blue and red. Flat from a distance, but close inspection shows a magisterial touch, a painterly elegance that belies the scale, harking back to the masters of old. The tree is nothing in particular. The house is but a house. On the same street are many houses, many trees. Some of them are more impressive, others are less so. But this particular house, this particular tree: they will rise above all others, persisting as they do in the gallery of my mind. Going to a Patti Smith concert at age 60 You step up into the large space. That’s where the stage is. It’s already filling up and the room smells of beer, you see it sloshing over the rims of plastic glasses and spilling onto the shoes of the oblivious audience. You might feel an unanticipated thrill, something electric yet familiar, tearing through the crust of time. I remember this. It’s the thrill of being, of belonging. Being with the people I call my own. The ones in leather jackets and tight jeans, the ones who say “fuck” without a second thought, the ones who paint on walls or make cheap jewelry, who prefer to sleep during the day and work at night. The young. I remember Horses. I remember Radio Ethiopia. Not just in recollection, but as new, as inspirational, as an extended finger thrust into the face of the stale and predictable. Our daughters can’t understand what this meant to us then. They see her, understandably, as just a cool old lady who makes interesting music. Our children have their own cultural signifiers, their own way of having a stake in a rebel generation. But Patti speaks to them. So perhaps our generation did do some things right. For me, she is a role model of how to grow old gracefully, how to resist the pressure to conform to someone else’s stereotype. Standing here for three hours leaves me in physical agony, but this is worth every last painful second. Musicians The ambience is empire bordello. Color schemed in orange and brown, lighting dim and sconced, making an effort, one presumes, to hide a certain decrepitude. I sit at a solitary table, dinner for one. Alone, I’m pressed up against the tiny stage. Two guitarists, young and nervy, resplendent in jeans and checkered shirts. The musicians pick their nylon strings, trading jazzy riffs beneath the full wall mural. A breathtaking cornucopia of fruits and flowers: pumpkin, poppy and eggplant catch the eye. From the surrounding tables comes polite clapping. These multi-generational families accept the unfamiliar music as part of the price to pay for a night of pasta and cheap wine. There’s a new mural almost every visit but the families, while different, are always the same. Each table is aloof, self-absorbed, oblivious to the richness of life that surrounds them. I feel like I ought to take the guitarists home. A private concert, absorbing their blues and Latin jazz. We’d laugh and drink beer while they jam, and follow up with whisky and deep conversation. But it’s clearly much too hot in here. The ceiling fans struggle valiantly, unable to keep up. I sip my glass of iced water and wonder, where do these curious ideas come from?
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David Tuvell has written poems appearing, or forthcoming, in Coe Review, Corvus Review, Easy Street, I-70 Review, Minetta Review, Mud Season Review, New Orleans Review, The Penmen Review, Steel Toe Review, and other publications. His Bachelor of Arts in English comes from Kennesaw State University. Outside of poetry, David’s path has been quite various, and he has made his way through things like information science, information technology, and labor. The Centurion at Kefar Nahum O, for a baker with a kind beret! A dashing prince, an Errol Flynn, who would but shoot the moon! A lounging god of thick éclairs, a Humphrey-Bogart-Lenin! We would paint the forest red for him, dispel all unkind weather, and when he gave out Christmas gifts, we'd be his favorite sweater. We'd love to feed his sweet tooth with such sublime, mellow decay: more Columbian brew and cigarettes than Leuchter at his Auschwitz. Mike Gallagher is an Irish writer and editor. His prose, poetry, haiku and songs have been published worldwide. His writing has been translated into Croatian, Japanese, Dutch, German, Italian and Chinese He won the Michael Hartnett Viva Voce competition in 2010 and 2016, was shortlisted for the Hennessy Award in 2011 and won the Desmond O'Grady International Poetry Contest in 2012. His collection Stick on Stone is published by Revival Press. http://www.limerickwriterscentre.com/books/stick-on-stone/ Birth of a Naturalist Rambling out on Thade Cud’s road one bright and early morning, the strangest noise rolled down the hill, it came without a warning. Revving bikes beyond the bog, or cats discordant purring? 'Twas hard to tell, to tell at all, what really was occurring. Fresh amateur naturalist mused on this sound so soaring: would a pride of lions proud to our bogland go snoring? So on he climbed up Thade Cud's hill, his mad thoughts still provoking, until he came upon the source of that awful, awful croaking. Crammed in a boghole, dim and dark, amid the mud and slobber, had gathered all the local frogs dressed in their mottled clobber. There in bubbled water seething, skinny-dipping and embroiled, cold amphibians were enraptured, arms and legs now intercoiled. This righteous man, three score and ten, thought such lewd behaviour shocking, all that brazen, wanton sex, all this shameless interlocking. Spotted anon by bouncer frog, disgruntled at his gawping, sent the raucous revellers underwater hopping. He moved in near to see more clear, reined in his rampant corgi; said bullfrog: No sir, come no closer, this is a private orgy. Barbara Suen is from Mishawaka, Indiana. She has had a journal by her side for at least 30 years. In times of stress, recording dreams/ nightmares, and joys in life went into the journals. The poems started there. She writes for the passion of it, and hopes that it touches someone out there. Makes someone smile, or even "save" someone. Published in Several Anthologies. Also, published in many issues of "Soul Fountain" magazine, and one international magazine, " The Storyteller" ! Recently Honored to have her work seen in "The North American" edition of " Our Poetry Archives" An e-zine seen Internationally. Her dream is to publish her own collection of poems some day! Fill Me With Your Words I ache with hunger An unexplainable craving for words of beauty of pain and joy Your truth and mine mixed in a pot of knowing I read the poem take it apart save that which pierces through my heart until I bleed that which reaches the core of me until I cry Then, I see, feel you touch you yet you are nowhere near me In fact you are on the other side the light of understanding goes on of what the poet was trying to bite off and chew I then get inside of them to digest it they "feed" me as they are fed. Our spirits then full stare at each other with "awe". I am full once again. The "hunger" is however, Eternal. Heath Brougher is the poetry editor of Five 2 One Magazine. He has published two chapbooks, "A Curmudgeon Is Born" (Yellow Chair Press) and "Digging for Fire" (Stay Weird and Keep Publishing Co.). He is a Best of the Net Nominee and was the judge of Into the Void's 2016 Poetry Competition. His work has appeared in both print and online journals in 12 countries and has also been translated into Albanian. Coldly Burnt Away The Autumnal onslaught makes the leaves on the trees recede in color counting backwards from green soon enough the leaves turn the shade of burning things brightly arranged embers making it looks as if the trees themselves were ablaze as the eyes scan across the valley the sight is similar to a smokeless wildfire. I Found God I found God huddled half dead in a garbage can in the alley of the city on a rainy night. I tried to fix It, nurture It back to health but It seemed to not want any of my help and instead preferred to simply slump there in It’s current state of carelessness. What can you do when someone won’t help themselves? Even when it’s the being supposed to be helping others? Live (written for my uncle while he was in an induced coma and hooked up to a breathing machine with blood poisoning and a collapsed lung) You’ve been thrown the stairs to the deepest depths of this pantheistic place. You are alone yet not alone. We are all here for you but there is only so much help we can offer. The rest is up to you; to climb back up those painful steps that you were so impersonally tossed down and make it back to us. It will be a tedious process but you know better than anyone that you are more than capable of it. I know you have already begun that slow and pang-ridden crawl, one step every three days. No matter what you must continue this climb, step after excruciating step. And when you finally do reach the top of those evil stairs and wake up, don’t say a word. Just breathe for a while. Just breathe. When the Blaze Begins There are occasions when that ever-burning flicker of a flame is suddenly swept up by gale-force inspiration and grows into giant whorls of blazing creativity as the mind sheds its inner turbulence and spills it out onto the canvass of the page. During these moments that little flicker suddenly spreads into a scorching wildfire of thoughts, its flames lashing out like fiery orange fangs biting upward at the sky. The Sound of the Sun “Listen.” “To what? “To the silence, or what we believe to be silence which may actually be the grinding lapping licking sound of the sun which all creatures have evolved to block out and hear what we perceive to be silence.” A PhD in English Literature and LLB from LN Mithila University, Darbhanga, and CELTA from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, Vijay Kumar Roy is the author of Realm of Beauty and Truth: A Collection of Poems (2016), Premanjali (2009), a collection of poems in Hindi, and editor of The Melodies of Immortality (2012), an anthology of poetry, besides editor of and a dozen academic books. He teaches English at Northern Border University, Arar, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He has also taught at SRM University, NCR Campus, Ghaziabad, UP and two other universities. He is editor-in-chief of Ars Artium (http://www.arsartium.org/index.html), a widely indexed international research journal of humanities and social sciences published from New Delhi. He can be contacted at: drvkroy78@yahoo.com. The Progeny of Fanatics The progeny of fanatics are busy everywhere to influence you and bring you under their clutches to tame you and make you a puppet. They preach that usurping others’ powers and lands changing history and geography converting others’ ancestral faith and spreading hatred to achieve their written goals give them place in heaven. The world has seen so many ultraists who changed the maps and notions of nations by their ill-gotten might. Either fear of death or love of intimacy or self- made theories of temptation helped them achieve their goals and leave behind their true adherents even after centuries to plant the same plants to re-ruin all that took centuries in creating by true adherents of the Lord. In oblivion my eyes are tired to see the Unseeable but His scriptures tell me the truth as you show, so shall you reap today or tomorrow. It’s a cycle, coming and going: generating, operating and destroying to run the universe and keep all these ongoing going, going and going… Jeff Newberry's most recent book is the novel A Stairway to the Sea (Pulpwood Press, 2016). His writing has appeared in a variety of online and print publications, most recently in Peacock Journal, Atticus Review, and Snake Nation Review. Find him online at www.jeffnewberry.com. Letter to Justin after Orlando, after Sandy Hook I’ve never owned a real gun—never wanted one. As a child, I idolized soldiers & killing, thrived on Vietnam War movies & thought John Rambo a national treasure. My friends bought Dollar Store AK-47s & stalked the jungles of our backyard imaginations. We dodged invisible grenades & killed “gooks” and “wops,” the yellow men of our imaginations because we wanted to show each other our manliness. I was a fat kid, Justin—my boy boobs jiggled behind an ill-fit K-Mart camouflage t-shirt. My breath wheezed through lungs made shallow by nights of Little Debbie cakes & RC Cola. I had to prove to them I could run, had to show them nothing scared me. My narratives were the bloodiest, the violent tales of bouncing betties taking a man’s legs out in a red haze. I slaughtered scores of imagined enemies to prove I loved America, to make them love me even more. I never served, Justin, to answer a friend’s question, who interrogated me in the days after Iraq, when I wondered why we’d waded into yet another quagmire. My father did his four years & ditched the Air Force after the Cuban Missile Crisis. He told me he lay in his bunk & waited for the world to end. Tonight, I’m listening to my son run through the house, telling his cousin, “I’m gonna kill you” because the boy had taken my son’s toy. I laugh & know that it’s not serious. He’s only got a water pistol. His rights are safe. He can fight for his freedom. He can walk into a night club or high school tomorrow, free as an ejected shell. Ryan Warren lives with his family by the sea in Northern California. He is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, and his poetry has previously appeared in numerous journals including California Quarterly, Poetry Daily, Poetry Breakfast, Amaryllis, Wilderness House Literary Review, Firefly Magazine, Verse-Virtual, and the anthology, Carry The Light. More on his published works can be found at http://www.facebook.com/RyanWarrenPoetry. Mintaka The apogee of Orion's Belt the western-most hitch for his dark pants is a double star, actually A and B: bright blue giants twin suns circling every five days each 3 billion years old and yet still younger than our own star born as our own earth broke apart its supercontinent first formed its magnetic field whose light took 916 years to arrive left as Henry I was crowned in England the Crusades raged Héloïse was born Abélard's destiny was set and a picture of the twin blue suns of Mintaka went forth across the universe and was received by my eyes almost a thousand years later and just as I was beginning to think that important things were happening around me today ---------- Past Life In my previous life I was a leaf. Or was I Cleopatra? I don't know, I can't claim her memories. I have no lingering animosity towards Romans, no unexplained fear of asps. But what I do know about is budding, is spring, is green so brilliant it terrifies the world that celebrates your greenness. What I know about is unfolding, damp and limber, learning how to open to what feeds you. I have felt the thousand little things that eat small holes in you crawl across my darkening body. How they labor to take pieces away, leaving you less than you thought you needed. I know about how the holes seal darkened at the edges. Little discs of nothing punched through you. How you still go on. I can remember the warm, yellow days when everything you collect flows, as it should, to root and branch. I know about the joy of buds, appearing, brighter, tender leaves, unfurling around you. I have known what it is to see the brittle, brown leaves dropping before you. To hear them released, and slowly fall away. I have felt the drying at my edges, the weakening at my stem. Perhaps I was someone else, too. A serf starving on the Russian steppe, a Pygmy medicine woman, a potato bug. Or simply star stuff, the sum total of carbon the universe was willing to share on a given day. But then a stiff, fall breeze rustles the ruddy foliage. Crisp leaves break loose from their beds, swirling about our heads for a moment, and again I remember—and again I am with them, falling back and away, down to the waiting earth. ---------- The Moon Illusion Lemonwhite and smudged by ocean haze I stumble upon a huge softball moon suspended above the twilit hillside. Not the cold, bright golfball moon sailing through the high dark sky but its bigger, easier laughing cousin full as my moonshining eyes as my twilit heart. Which they say is a lie an inflationary trick played on my wanting mind when the round moon hangs just above the lip of some horizon-- and which I can test by holding up to it an object of reference, a dime from my pocket, to see that, really, the broad, desirous low moon and the thin, austere high moon are exactly the same size. But why should I believe that? Does my own size not change-- though never at all compared to the dime in your pocket? Don't I grow from thin to bursting to equanimity to tears within a single day, without ever changing the dimensions of my skin? Don't you? Leave your dime in your pocket, we have enough objects of reference and no need to test the fullness of our hearts. ---------- Flesh The chicken is slippery as I strip meat from bone, slippery from the fat woven like a thread through the plump carcass carcass, corpse, body—it’s all context the chicken arrived roasted, skin crispy and seasoned herb-covered, smelling delicious, and my job my job is to strip soft, white flesh from rubbery bone flesh for soups, for salads, flesh for a week of meals, and not to sneak too much too much lures me in as I carefully separate tissue from sinew fat from meat, muscle from cartilage and fascia pull apart what bound this bird when it still breathed, not now now’s not the time to feel nerve, to think of this bird engineered to be drawn and quartered on kitchen counters while wildness is wound deep-set in all of our bones bones I dare not to toss my dog: poised, all coiled tension untroubled by concern for the bird, his singular focus-- waiting, wolflike, to break open the bones of his desire ---------- A Midwinter Hymn From Orion’s winter field of darkening we are received into the clear and cold hoof-footed, winged the shortest, the darkest the furthest tilted on the holy axis away from the heart of the circling sun. Holy holy hosanna when the cows are slaughtered, the beer fermented. Feast now and light now the holy lights drive out the fearsome dark light the longest, light the coldest begin now the tilting forward into the light let the lights be lighted and let light and love and joy come to you, and to you your wassail too and begin the holy holy return of the sun, of the Christchild, born this holy Saturnalia, this festival of lights begun this Brumalia, this Advent this Amaterasu, this Choimus, this Inti Raymi, this Koliada. Holy, holy Thai Pongal, holy Junkanoo, holy is this Makara Sankranthi, this Soyal, this Şeva Zistanê. Holy is Shab-e Yaldā, Dongzhi and Korochun, holy Shalako and holy Goru. This, this holy Chanukah, this Yule, this Ziemassvētki, this Christmas. Christmas, Christmas carried in by fickle Julenisse, leaping Joulupukki, by merry ghosts, by Ded Moroz, flown in by La Bafana, walked in by the Samichlaus, Weihnachtsmann, Chyskhaan St. Lucy, St. Nicholas, St Basil Kleesschen, Tió de Nadal. Noel Noel born is the King of Israel come let us adore him. Adore Matisyahu, Judah Maccabee, adore ancient Odin, give thanks to Dažbog, Thank you to wise Father Christmas, give thanks to gentle Santa Claus. O holy night Silent night when all is calm, bright mount then the holly, the ivy mount the greens of mistletoe bring in the ancient pagan tree. Light, light, light the ancient and the scented log light, light, bring forth the evergreens and light the 9 holy candles for 8 holy nights and remember the reason for the season of the ending, the bonedeep and the most ancient, the beginning, the slaughtering, the fermenting, the feasting and the light the light that weakens the ending darkness that light that lights the starting sun. Mandie Hines writes in the Rocky Mountain region. She’s driven to create pieces of fiction that capture moments of human vulnerability. Her work has appeared in Down in the Dirt, The Flash Fiction Press, and50-Word Stories. Visit www.mandiehines.com for more. The Things I Regret Forgetting 1. The sparkle in your eyes. See, when I try to remember… there’s only a blank canvas. I try harder but then there’s only splashes of faded colors. It’s like I’m legally blind and I can’t see one single line. And I just want to remember what the color green looked like when it was lit up by the heat of a thousand blazing suns when you saw me. And the gravity of them was so strong that it pulled the corners of your lips up to kiss your eyes. How I wish I could kiss your eyes. How I wish I could see your smile. 2. The sound of your voice. I don’t dream of you often. It’s as though you don’t want to haunt my dreams like you haunt my life, but I just want to hear the sound of your voice. I want to remember the cadence of your speech tiptoeing across my skin reminding me that you believe in all of my dreams, and your voice assuring me that I can believe in them too. 3. I regret forgetting how to think of you and smile. 4. How to think of you and not cry. 5. How to think of you and not feel my heart being ripped out of my chest and mourning over the gaping hole that’s left. 6. I wish I remembered the curves of your face. 7. I regret forgetting that just because you didn’t die at the scene didn’t mean that you would survive the car wreck. 8. That just because I wasn’t in the vehicle didn’t mean that I would survive the car wreck. 9. I regret forgetting that I didn’t know how much time we had left. 10. I’m sorry that I didn’t write. 10. I’m sorry that I didn’t call. 10. I’m sorry that I didn’t meet you at the hospital. 10. I’m sorry that when I arrived, you never woke up. 10. I can’t move on. 10. I can’t move on. 10. I can’t move on… because I know you won’t be with me. 10. I regret forgetting that I can’t forget how much it hurts that you’re gone. Aspirations Like petals plucked from daises Aspirations float to the floor. I continue in the darkness, Searching for the outreached hand that led me before… Closing my eyes, my world begins to spin I have to remind myself once more: Just Breathe… It’s not this space I’m lost in, It’s the confusion in my head. All I really wish to do, is curl up back in bed. It takes all the strength I have To open my eyes. It takes all the hope inside To proceed toward the door. Stumbling on the thoughts I have Tripping on the petals Reaching with one gasp of breath I swing open the door. I’m suffocating, Waiting for a whisper of air I look up to see the same room I was in before. Walking from one room to the next They all look the same. Sighing, I slump to the floor, I’m tired of this game. In one moment of clarity A realization sets in: It was never the rooms that were the same It was the frustration that came from within. Silence Runs Dry Voices from the past echo through the room. Silence runs dry. My heart's been struck by the moon. Stars come tumbling down. The forest shadows the sound. If happiness lies behind me, what lies before me. The rain falls toward the sky. I stare from the ledge and see my life. I turn away and cover my eyes. I shouldn't be alone but somehow I've made it my home. I step back and fall. Scream softly as you can. My last resolution has been spent on somebody else. I awake to see nothing and sleep to find hope. At depth I am shallow for caring too much. Within I am empty filled with unrealized dreams. At length I have already failed myself. In short I have not lived. I close my eyes and pray. The angels turn to dust and sparkle over the sea. My mind fades to some distant memory. The sun begins to rise and pour over my soul. I am not who I think I am, and I am not who you see. I just wish for once I could see where I was going. All I ever wanted was to see where I was falling. And bottled up inside of me... Is me. Santosh Kumar Pokhrel is a senior civil engineer and a noted contemporary poet from Nepal. He spent almost seven years in in Moscow during his study. He is member of different literary sites and has frequent publications. Mr Pokhrel is a published poet and has hundreds of poems and two published books, the latest being SACRAMENTO POEMS. Sacramento Poems has also come out in an e-book form and can be found at www.odishaestore.com/sacramento. He has been published in US based Moonlight Dreamers in Yellow Haze and going to be published soon in Dandelion in Vase of Roses, both edited by Michael Lee Johnson and co-edited by Ken Allan Dronsfield. Poems by Santosh Kumar Pokhrel can be seen in several facebook literary groups. He has several poems published in Tuck magazine. The poet enjoys three world languages English, Russian and French including Hindi and mother tongue Nepali. Most of his poems are lyrical and rhyming. His poems range from simple romantic to metaphysical full of oriental sentiments. September 20, 2015 (Nepal constitution day)
RUSTIC Let the love and sentiment tsar That instill in them so far In hearts of the rustic folks In maidens with braid-locks, Those all the daylong toil Grieve with smile they foil And cease to bed tranquil With light the bellies fill. No malice nor grudges and claims No shows no glamour no blames. Observe they lives midway From ages they live this way. Their pure humor and love Those nag not you and shove By heart they are so kind They own no nasty mind. They feed your cities still And bid you no much bill Have cried when you did cry See, eyes are not yet dry. In countries far off, suburbs, Feels no bounds and curbs Kindness do they impart So wide are generous hearts! Dordi Stream The stream runs down in rage She did an unclaimed war wage Against suffering or she did sway In her stern path away From the time to us unknown Neither known to us her tone And the moan she may have en route Coming down us to suit Our needs; and thirst ours quench And our farms willfully drench. How generous of you stream! You are so supreme! Supreme a lady kind Troubles who did never mind Till now when we been old This has been many a times told By those who here passed away And have fallen to ancestral bay In peace may they remain! Eternal bliss they may gain! And realize their abode soon Grace them eternal boon! Oh stream, you grace theirs screams And lift those all souls in dream Of you; sovereign and serene! |
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