A Poem by Kate LaDew

there’s an atomic clock ticking by my record player table

there’s an atomic clock ticking by my record player table
it’s able to recalculate itself, blinking at the same rate as the world,
accurate to infinity, dropping down to the hundredth of any given second,
cooling atoms to absolute zero,
measuring clouds of fountains, atoms tossed into the air by lasers,
all this sits by my record player table
I watch the thick vinyl turn, looping out sounds that will be stored in my brain for eternity while everything else trickles through my heart like rain
they say ted williams could read the label of a spinning record from 60 feet away
I wonder if he counted the stitches on every baseball,
one by one or twos or fives, flying towards him in wavering lines,
atoms are weightless in the toss, invisible to any human eye
would ted have caught them with his bat, sent them over that great green wall in splatters?
does it matter if we’re all one second off?
when it’s finally time to die will we raise our hands into the air,
grasping at something we’re told is there but have never seen?
one eye on that atomic clock, the other blinking with the rhythm of our slowing heart
give me my last second back, we’ll shout at God
you owe it to me after all this living



Kate LaDew is a graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BA in Studio Art. She resides in Graham, NC with her cat, Charlie Chaplin. She is currently working on her first novel.

Two Poems by Joe Amaral

Queen of Carcasses

 

Scurry little princess

Pink and pretty

Entitled with money

See-through fragile tutu

 

So high and mighty

Sitting properly upon

Your cardboard throne

Scepter of false gold

Burger joint crown

Bejeweled by crayon

 

Revolt ye underling servants

Jester, serf, lady-in-waiting

Feast on the bones of

The rich bourgeois

 

Off with their heads

 

Human Houseplant

 

Lines scar

thin paper pastures

 

Wriggle like river etched landscapes

as the drizzle of a tear sleds off my cheek

 

Following unknown gravity along

mountainous paths

 

Demon-hearted volcano funnels

I quit the upward climb

 

My soulflower wilted, drowned via

the watery entrapment of a glass vase

 

Clear-viewed for all to observe my opaque demise

 

Clipped trees bow their heads in sympathy,

a synchronicity of sobs and sawn timber

 

I peer out my prison at the ordinary faces

Curious and confused, ignorant but sad

 

Their fear resides in the perfume my petals echo

 

Strangely quixotic, old intoxications

I let my pieces droop off

 

One by one

 

Knowing freedom is an outdoor burial

 

Joe Amaral is a paramedic who spends most his time spelunking around the California central coast, though he is an OG raised in the San Francisco East Bay Area. His poetry and short stories have appeared in many literary journals and print anthologies, including A Handful of Dust, amphibi.us, Carcinogenic Poetry, Certain Circuits, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Eclectic Flash, RED OCHRE LiT, and Underground Voices. He also has pieces published internationally via Decanto Magazine, DIOGEN, Litro, and Taj Mahal Review.

A Poem by Olly Peel

I See I Have Been Removed

 

It is strange how the wind took my words

From the Engadin – its glassy Sils

Where, I swear, I saw my name

Inscribed for a time –

Somewhat higher

In its beginning,

And danced me down

The shaded Val Fex (where lesser

Runs to greater)

To move, finally, amongst your darkening sense

 

I sign, I take account,

But am mistaken by my auditor,

Significantly so;

I respond – you rise up –

And leave the room,

Caring little for raised words

 

That valley comes to me again –

It and I are the thing –

Perceived much

And Set within a frame

 

I cannot go again –

Twice to speak the same –

And call you back;

I try, but I hear in my voice

A voice unascribed

 

So I have called myself to your dock;

Here I sit, waiting not on judgement,

But on consequence;

I hear – I pronounce –

 

Orphan, you have hated your father

Wrongly: his intentions were only good;

So, sojourner, go and live among them –

See what they will say of you

 

I found her discursive this afternoon;

I wish she would find her point,

But often I find her elsewhere

(And I with her: I am rarely where I am)

 

Do not tell me I fell because of ambiguity;

I fell because, not grasping, I reached

 

– I am an irresponse–

Created, creating, under your creation

 

That bloody gate has ruined me;

But I – lying on my side, if I remember –

Was dead long ago –

 

 

 

 

 

Two Poems By Susan Dale

Standing In The Doorway Of Yesterday

  In the thin light of March
   When naked trees wear
   Only voices of the past
Then do I rewind remembrance
Time velvet in depths of shadows
Weightless dreams and distant figures
   Standing in nocturnal doors
   Light and the way it creates
   Atmosphere around the years
The way light falls on yesterday
   With its breath of mist
   Feathers drawn across
  The wet paint of memory
Tremors- Quivers- Aloft in the air
Yesterday, with its lines crossed over
    Rubbed thin, crumpled within
          The fingers of fate
Ephemeral shadows shading winter windows
      Luminous winter light
     And the snow that dusts
  My windows with dreams
Sweeping with vertical strokes
Wiping over with whitewash
  Across the epitaphs of time



Memories

No barriers between
   pervasive silence
      and the weight of words

Transparent curtains lifted
           to lost beginnings

The way that shadows step
                backwards in time

   Into spheres of colors

Or mingle with the whispers of water

The naked brutality of separations

The metallic flavors pressed on all sides
                  with memories falling
                                    through clouds

Secrets into secret selves

Our landscapes stretched to exiled worlds
Spring back into interiors
To be held within our hearts



Susan’s poems and fiction are on Eastown Fiction, Tryst 3, Word Salad, Pens On Fire, Ken *Again, Hackwriters, and Penwood Review. In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan. 

Two Poems by Steve Klepetar

Still life with Smoke

You can smell it on the ripening

fruit, peaches

and bananas and dark plums

glinting in harsh

light of a bare bulb. Perhaps rising

from a cigarette

consuming itself on the savage lip

of an ashtray’s ironic smile.

And whose hand is that, resting

on the rust-red table, more

weary than starved, half eaten

by thick, acidic air? Who has

offered this feast of floodlights

and chains? What defeated

mouth helplessly surges towards flesh?

When Fire Comes

When planets align and winter beaches groan

with surge, who will lead you home? What skies

will welcome you, traveller battered by roads

unsheltered and unadorned? Tattoos mark

your shoulders and your neck – a chariot,

a sword and a horse with feathered wings –

but now you know you have been away too long.

Distance hasn’t rescued you, nor has all

you’ve seen survived the instant of a dream.

Lost in this wild wind, your ears have lost

the thread of human speech. Cold gravel clogs

your lips and tongue. This frigid night your skin

glows radiation green, and even open doors

won’t stand long against a massive blaze.

When fire comes, where will you find a space?

Even angels feel this kind of heat. Impassive

eyes, so beautiful and blue, discern

such shimmering waves as lift surrounding air

to tumbling clouds of rage and eyeless storm.

Steve Klepetar teaches literature and creative writing at Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota. His work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Flutter Press has recently published his latest chapbook "My Father Teaches Me a Magic Word,]."

A Poem by Andy Popper

Arringham’s City Market

 

Apples stacked behind the tomatillos and French sorrel

Dusty with lumps compared with their waxed retail siblings.

The brown-gray authenticity coats rhubarb and dill

In the stationary caravan of boxes and baskets.

Sellers with beards, loose shirts and jackknives,

Freed of barcode, fluorescence, and background music

Offer slices of pear and yellow cheese with crusty bread,

Offer transformation, an embrace, a green seduction, a rural trance.

Products measured by eye and sold by the handful,

By penciled purveyors who assist the illusion,

One-lane roads, tractors, a wobbly table, and trust,

As a taxi passes and a cop gives a ticket.

“What farm grew these?” you want to ask – but no,

Why make the inquiry? You anticipate a blank response, then

Someone will ask one of the brothers who owns the show

And lives in a split-level on a sixth of an acre.

One of the brothers who shops at the East Harbor market at 0500.

And crates the apples in boxes stamped with the family name,

Arringham’s Market, on Saturdays, in a concrete parking lot

Used during the week for executives of a brokerage firm.

Bring your dog and tie around his neck a checkered bandana

Breathe the cloud of sweet vanilla and freshly baked wonders

Pies and breads made at a small factory just north,

Only a few minutes from the entrance to the tunnel.

Andrew Frederic Popper has taught at American University, Washington College of Law for the last three decades. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2010 University Scholar/Teacher of the Year. He is the author of more than 100 published novels, casebooks, articles, papers, poems, and public documents. 

A Poem by Darren C. Demaree

 

Poem For My Unborn Thomas #55

 

 

Used to pulsed blood, just wait

for the reliance of your own flush

to raise the rushing tide of marriage

within your own risky stream

& what you choose to pluck

from the maroon cascades. You

will want to have such great energy

when you feel the magical, brave

push to be alive, frightened

& in your mother’s arms all at once.

There is no poetry in your blood, son,

but the call to high spirit is your right.

 

 

 

Darren's poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including the South Carolina Review, Meridian, Grain, Cottonwood, The Tribeca Poetry Review, and Whiskey Island. Recently, Freshwater Poetry Journal and Blue Stem have each nominated him for a Pushcart Prize.

His first full collection of poetry, tentatively entitled “As We Refer To Our Bodies” is forthcoming from 8^th House Publishing House this fall.

He is currently living and writing in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and daughter.

A Poem by Louis Marvin

Zenny Kenny-Grand Ideas on Caffeine

in the palm of my hand lies the universe

in my mind lies the tranquility you seek

do not speak and blast apart that which is perfect without your mundane thoughts

lie quietly and let the universe of this room surround you

you who yearn for something that is not here and not now

you who want something that brings fleeting happiness

go away from us, as we are happy with this bee, this tree, this bird

go away and look into a solid gold watchband

you will see a distorted face that was once yours

the universe lies quietly in my hand

I blow it to you like a feather

like a child’s bubble that will never break

it lands softly in your palm

do not crush it with a false handshake

do not salute fellow officer and let it fall to be crushed under boot

let it lie quietly

this universe now in the palms of our hands

 

 

 

Louis Marvin, Born in Burbank, Raised (hell) Phoenix, Living/Loving in Hawaii

Two Poems by Kanchan Chatterjee

stopping by

 

around mid-day

the bus stops

at the motel…

 

I sit inside

and look out

through the broken

window pane...

 

a lonely cow munches cardboard;

a backdrop of baked landscapes,

 

mountain ranges

or maybe dunes;

from a distance they all look the same

 

I eat in silence and wait…

a moment captured

 

looking out the moving window

I see an old fellow

sitting under the

shadow of a

Coca-Cola hoarding

by the dried up river

 

catching his breath...

Kanchan is a 44 year old male executive working in the finance department of government of India. Although he doesn't have a literary background, he loves poetry and he scribbles as and when he gets time or inclination. Some of his poems have been published by Indian publishers, namely, Cyberwit.net and Indus Valley. A few of his poems have appeared in some e-magazine and journals from around the world such as hauntedwaterspress, Oddity etc.

A Poem by John Casquarelli and Aimee Herman

vacuumed sequence of non-committal   

 

I keep breaking down mountain landscapes

to subjects and predicates

 

call upon lineage        within line        wrinkle         mourning

 

hang on roots and branches

study some meaning that has entirely changed

 

today: hatred        unconfirmed traumatic        mothers' sick grows louder while baby still forms lashes and opinions        later: love       or skinny        or bone structure reveals homo sapien finger swallow           tomorrow: cancer     or a way out of hair comb and breast swell

 

say okay in a noncommittal voice

 

hand over cliff notes version of self

place napkin upon folded lap and nod

agree to hate because love is too messy and expensive

 

always have a lover on the side who will do the things the Bible disagrees with

 

do whatever it is I like

 

but what I like can be both

fact and hallucination

dream sequence or invasion of privacy

 

only after a long period of time          do women wonder why gender is pressed against bathroom doors

 

this isn’t rare science

common sense

just plain stuck avoiding you

 

there is decision in indecision      in fragmented opinion      in reduced price vocalization

 

at the worst possible moments            toenails curve up toward skylight

 

but a branch of our river

that runs past old sawmill town

to front porch and twenty year memories

 

but a growth on the side of a road

on interstate twenty or route nine

swells beneath tires and rubber rib cage

 

besides

 

there is such a thing as quality

though completely irrational

after many turns you dig your feet

into the soft duff of needles edgewise

or you’ll slide down

burn like grass surrounding trees

scatter and collapse into shade

 

we’re too accustomed to hand filled promises

of oxygen laughter over jazz radio that

floods miles of empty horizon

 

sit with line in water

and turn away from pine odor mid-afternoon

hidden beneath the braids in your hair

“closeness has nothing to do with what is asked,” I said

you have to be in a certain mood to accept bad advice

with little practical value

the kind that makes your lips bleed

at the canyon wall where the wind freezes

there’s a name for this kind of semi-desert

but I don’t know what it is

why every word quivers off the glass door

each time you motion to me

 

“glass wheels have no religious preference/   glass eyes have no directional pattern/   glass sip has no language requirements/   glass woman has no idea where her hips are/   glass word has no choice but to fissure/   glass womb has no comfort in its supper/   glass man has no limbs beyond his weapon/   glass house    glass spit    glass animal    glass empty    glass collapse    collapse    synapse    sinking    skin graft ” 

   

every marriage should come with an interpreter

merge both classic and romantic understandings

about what looks good

you in that dress looks good

you with that paycheck looks good

you and that mortgage and these diamonds

and a maid and weekly flower delivery

and leather furniture

and stainless steel appliances

and surrogate body to house our children

and monthly appointments of cosmetic enhancements

looks good

scrub small patch of emotion when you’re absent

                                   hoping for some answers amid ocean trenches

                                   of self-awareness

dinosaurs are obsolete

though you're bound to discover

plenty of them at almost every job

conversations with no point or purpose

other than to ditch rocky gorges in dry country

maybe it's just the usual late evening letdown

but if you're a sloppy thinker five days a week

then why should you give a shit about the weekend

 

 

 

 

John Casquarelli is an English professor at Boricua College in New York. He received his M.F.A. in the Creative Writing program at Long Island University. He was awarded the 2010 Esther Hyneman Award for poetry. His work has appeared in several publications including Downtown Brooklyn, Kinship of Rivers, By The Overpass, Brooklyn Paramount, Pulp, The International Rebecca West Society, and Sun’s Skeleton. His first full-length book, On Equilibrium of Song, was published by Overpass Books (2011).

Aimee Herman, a queer performative poet, has been featured at various New York venues such as Dixon Place, Wow Café Theatre, Public Assembly, and Sidewalk Café. She has performed at reading/performance series such as: Hyper Gender, Sideshow: Queer Literary Carnival, and Red Umbrella Diaries. Her poetry can be found in InStereo Press, and/or journal, and Polari Journal. Her first full-length book, To Go Without Blinking, was published by BlazeVOX Books (2012).

Two Poems by Jane Oliver

We are careless

Too many things are broken

pictures, notes, people.

We break our word - rarely

hyphenating an excuse

irrationally separating

pieces of the truth.

Dreams lie scattered in dirt

sharded by ‘I don’t think’

a voice out of harmony

discordant arpeggio

cubes in a landscape.

We are careless and things break.

Useless things

We carry things with us like an empty

violin case – useless to anything except

the violin. Grandmother’s bequeathed

jewellery which will never be worn, but it

might be worth something to someone

some day. Old faded, crack-folded too

often reread love letters to remember

and constantly hold out false hope.

We straddle longing’s stringless cello that

resonates only with a knock on wood,

and beat the heart’s broken-skinned drum

sending unwanted messages nowhere.

Jane Oliver is an editor at The Mindful Word.  Find out more about her poetry by visiting her website http://www.alwaysstandingonmyhead.com/poetry.htm

A Poem by Sherry Steiner

it was 3 pm. the sun was gone. and so was he.

she never realized the scope of his presence. when present he was quiet. when gone he was loud. how startling the difference in the here and not here. he picked up a feather on the floor and put it in his pocket. the french are known to do that.

il était 15h00. le soleil a disparu. et lui aussi.

elle n'a jamais réalisé la possibilité de sa présence. quand le présent il était silencieux. quand parti il était fort. comment l'ébranlement de la différence dans ici et pas ici. il a ramassé une plume à l'étage et l'a mis dans sa poche. on connu que le français le fasse.

 

 

 

Sherry Steiner

Housatonic ma

www.sherrysteiner.com

Two Poems by William Davies, Jr.

My Wife

　
She didn’t consider
The dove-tail joints
Or, that it was made
Of Birdseye maple.

Only that the center drawer,

In addition to socks
Contained letters
From Iraq,
A stone butterfly
With one eye,
A trove of birthday cards
Replete with the
Corniest of sentiments:
“Forget a blender lets
Go on a bender.”
Scalloped photographs
Caramelized in
Plastic lunch bags
She would move
Over and over.


Torture

　
Her father ladles
Her into the grass,
A nesting doll
With thick glasses,

A broken toy.

Tiny, barely
Eight years old
Already a dowager
Of hospitals
Brought to this
Girls softball game,
The same as if
Taken to the ER
In the middle
Of the night,
Only now
No siren
Or flashing lights,
Just worse.

He has recently had a poem published in The Cortland Review and poems accepted by The Wilderness House Review and Blue Lyra Review.

He live in rural Pennsylvania with his wife, Theresa, and they bottle our own wine.

Two Poems by James Tierney

The Grimm Sisters

Safe from the danger

Of bed time stories

They reveled

In the paradise of day dreams

Where in their orderly world

Life was easy to handle

With time enough on their hands

To be repelled by what others

Were attracted to

They were at an age when

Instinct prospered over reason

Bored with older brothers

Who turned theirhands

To happy endings

Which in a woman’s world

Wasn’t as simple as it sounded

The jazz singer’s broken heart

There were any number of reasons

But no onereason

Why her heart

Didn’t seem to be in it that night

A perfunctory performance

An almost deliberate disaster

In setting out to be disliked

She was a huge success

At times like this

It was assumed

There were as many reasons

As there were pieces to her heart

Born in Northumberland (UK), James now lives and works in Milan, Italy. Following a Bachelor of Education course at the University of Durham he worked as a Press & Publicity Manager in commercial and repertory theatres up and down the country.

This led to a post with the Foreign Office as Contracts Manager at the British Council, Milan. There James took an advanced diploma in Business Administration from Cambridge University followed by an MBA from the University of Leicester.

Married with two children James now works at the University of Milan, specialising in the area of Business Administration. Publications to date include a number of language course books including a project for the Open University. Poetry includes a number of titles published in 2012 by Forward Poetry.

A Poem by Dana Yost

 

Slaughterhouse

 

A broken-boarded, loose-nailed

should-be-buried farm shed, still bearing a weak

coat of barn-red paint. It was in the trees,

just south of town, south of the pile of

gravel and sand stored by the highway department.

We called it the Slaughterhouse,

‘though I doubt things were ever butchered there:

just a name drummed up by kids looking for

something of semi-fascination and backstory,

something beyond the small-town everyday.

Barely teens, the old place in the grip of —

pick a “d” word: decay, deterioration, disrepair —

was where we spent our days for a few summers,

with pilfered cans of beer, hot dogs we’d cook

over a garbage barrel, where top-forty songs

boomed out of a portable radio.

Desolate, but ours.

 

It’s where I slow-danced with the St. Paul girl,

kissed her when no one was looking,

then, before we biked back to town,

kissed her again — this time, everyone looking.

 

Yeah, you did that then.

You tried life out.

Others, mingling their toes in the river’s bend,

smoking their first cigarettes,

swearing out loud because there was no soap,

carving their names into the rotting wood of the floor.

It’s gone now, of course. Bulldozed years ago

to clear field space so someone could

plant crop as close as he could to the river.

A map’s worth of old buildings we used to

bike to in summers has been wiped

out of being — country stores where you’d get

a bottle of grape pop for a dime;

Stevie’s grandmother’s two-story farmhouse,

burned and buried, along with the grove,

by the investors who bought all 480 acres.

New uses for old places.

But are there new uses for the old people?

Or even the young?

 

One night, a country drive. I watch a controlled burn

in a black field west of town: ridding the land of weeds

and stalks. They'd burn rock if there was a way.

 

I remember the shed and the St. Paul girl.

I remember the wetness of her lips,

the way she wrapped her arms around my back,

holding us in place.

There may have been a dragonfly.

There may have been a song on the radio.

Through one of the broken windows,

I could hear the river.

It made the sound of forever.

And she held us in place.

 

 

 

Dana Yost is the author of two published books, 2008's Grace, a collection of new poems; and 2010's The Right Place, a collection of essays and poems. His third book, A Higher Level: Life's Large Lessons From a Small College on the Prairie, a regional history book, will come out this fall from Ellis Press. He was an award-winning daily newspaper editor for 29 years at papers in the Upper Midwest. His poetry has appeared in a variety of journals and magazines, including Stymie Magazine, Awakenings Review, Open Minds Quarterly, Relief, Turtle Quarterly, Red Booth Review, Bare Root Review, the Crusader, South Dakota Magazine, Time of Singing, and Wolf Head Quarterly. He lives in Forest City, Iowa.

Two Poems by John Casquarelli

 

answers move the silt downstream

 

this highway is beat-up concrete we pass at eight-thirty cool morning toward the Dakotas

free of billboards and advertisements and you say “Go away, I’m seeking truth.”

so we drive on

puzzled

willing to get lost in some farmer’s backyard

discuss memories, birth control,

and I confess to being an unfeeling, ignorant clod, a sort of trousered ape to whom it is obviously a waste of time to take an interest in anything higher than Lady Gaga's underwear

isn’t it enough to know the engine is flooded?

but, of course, that’s technology

it’s so simple when you see it

barbed-wire fences

locked gates

signs that say NO TRESPASSING

fewer trees and a sudden feeling of being a spectator amid the rattles near cottonwoods

after a while we whisper to mountain sunlight

run down each other’s ghosts

move to the bed by the window

I read a sentence or two from an old butterfly journal

afraid that voices will be silent if I let them

as soon as the wind stops

we rest our heads on the sleeve of my jacket

think of the empty road in the photograph

“Is there anything more,” you ask,

“besides one tiny refuge of scrub pines and mosquito repellent?”

familiarity makes it hard to see

past shady curbstone behind hotel

where you can throw a penny onto a small green plain

reach some temporary goal

that explains how much better it is to travel

than to arrive

 

Line is

 

a breath

before you glance

scarlet branch

on white wall

smile

because you were

plucked

and

eaten on sweet bread

 

you are spine

wrapped in

skin’s image

form bone

flute cadence

let loose

rain water

watch

the woods

fill up

 

merge sound

picture

whisky

convey a bow of

burning gold

sword in hand

speak through

some

other character





John Casquarelli is an English professor at Boricua College in New York. He received his M.F.A. in the Creative Writing program at Long Island University. He was awarded the 2010 Esther Hyneman Award for poetry. His work has appeared in several publications including Downtown Brooklyn, Kinship of Rivers, By The Overpass, Brooklyn Paramount, Pulp, The International Rebecca West Society, and Sun’s Skeleton. His first full-length book, On Equilibrium of Song, was published by Overpass Books (2011).