Two Poems by Diane Webster

SLEEP WRAPS

The cat lies on the countertop
between two perking coffee pots
warm with an exhaling purr
before sleep wraps around the trio
like the cat’s tail around its toes
while stuffing steams
from the turkey cavity,
and Thanksgiving guests
stare at napkins
lying on their laps
like a cat insisting attention.


HARMLESS FRIGHT

The mannequin stands guard
in the store’s nightlight shadows --
at first a startling thief
slinking in the corner of eyesight
frozen now under watchful stare
smiling that in a blink
it plays statue, a harmless fright
from the other side of the glass.



Diane Webster's goal is to remain open to poetry ideas from everyday life and nature and to write with a different perspective or different images. Her work has appeared in "Illya's Honey," "Old Red Kimono" and other literary magazines both in print and online.

Two Poems by Stephen Jarrell Williams

Flash Poetess

in and out
before the white coats
encircled her

their circus tent
making spectacles
of her kind
undressing
in the center ring

she didn't want that
keeping most of her secrets
from the glare of the spotlights

but she told enough
to make us believe in her dreams.


Last Night

I caught her
weeping in the shower

liquid pearls
clinging to her skin

she had made her decision
never to drown

in the deep dark drain of fame
still sucking at her feet

holding out her hand
I took her wet to our bed

wind from the open window
fanning us into the morning sanctity.


Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to stay up all night and write with lightning bolts until they fizzle down behind the dark horizon. He is the editor of Dead Snakes at http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/

A Poem by Taylor Graham

PETTING THE PUPPY IN STORM

Thunder transfers to

static in fur, each single hair

reaching out for

a signal

transmission -

her eyes caught

between brown rhapsody

of hand-touch &

lightning -

impending possibilities

untying every

knot, unloosing leashes.

Outside the

window, Thor's hammer-bolts

in revue,

crush of pressure/boom/

incandescence

(the house held by its

lightning rod)

sulfur

our room airlocked

between worlds,

my pup electric ever-ready.

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. She’s included in the anthologies Villanelles (Everyman’s Library, 2012) and California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her book The Downstairs Dance Floor was awarded the Robert Philips Poetry Chapbook Prize. Her newest book – Walking with Elihu: poems on Elihu Burritt, the Learned Blacksmith – is available on Amazon.

Two Poems by Sy Roth

Righteous Forfeiture

 

 

He brushes the sidewalks

Corn-husked whisk broom

Swishing mechanically back and forth

Vestiges tattooed to the earth.

Twinkling in the distance

A starred greeting

From some niche in a snow-capped mountain

Indelicately greets stony flesh.

Noxious air rises there in the morning light

Virtue tumbles indelicately with the man.

The sweeper toils around him

Pausing only to spit at the ground

And to peer at the dew-hazed sun’s

Failure to warm the ground

Except in the steaming pond

Pooling at his feet.

Neighbors tupping neighbors

In their revulsion song.

She bent indecorously over a table

Liquid eye watching drifting flakes of ash,

He hair-steering her toward limbo.

From a corner comes a Babel of rutting heaves.

Sara melts

And a mewling cry

Seeks her ululating lips.

The cleaner bends to his task

Cursing the ground

Deaf to the wails and staccato chatter of

The apes swinging rampant among the ruins.

Sara, she whispers sadly.

Yevo, he silently shrieks back.

 

 

 

 

 

Spirits Dwell

 

 

Where silence exists,

They perch and conduct their monkish vigilance

Responding to every electrical discharge--

Doorbell,

Flash of light.

Anguished cry of a childhood taken

Undulating in colossal waves

Brain flapped by lapping waters.

Dark-winged freeloaders

In miniscule hidey-holes, fusty garrets

Rest impatiently on high wires,

Ogle all newcomers,

Scrutinize their behaviors,

Memorize faces, and then

Signal that intruders encroach.

Swarming battle of crows

Dwelling in murky nooks and crannies,

Muddled phantasms, ghosts and Dybbuks

Sooted phalanxes,

Squawking congress of ebon islets

Black army arrayed on dying trees

Willful, gelatinous forms

Tangled uniluminated crawl spaces

Rolled in miles of remembrances.

The world scampers about blithely

While silent words and screams

Emerge from synaptic cataclysm.

Disrupt equilibrium

Like unwanted relatives,

Persnickety guests,

Taking up residence in the creases.

Night will emerge

With its unglad tidings.

 

 

 

 

 

Sy Roth is a retired school administrator and has finally found the sounds of silence and the time to think whole thoughts. This has led him to find words and the ability to shape them. He has published in Visceral Uterus, Amulet, BlogNostics, Every Day Poets, Barefoot Review, Haggard and Halloo, Misfits Miscellany, Mad Swirl, Larks Fiction Magazine, Danse Macabre, Bitchin’Kitch, Bong is Bard, Humber Pie, Poetry Super Highway, Penwood Review, Masque Publications, Foliate Oak, Miller’s Pond Poetry and The Eloquent Atheist.

 

 

A Poem by Andrew Kreider

refrain

 

and all the trees are dying

sheered off at the roots

arms slung wide as if

running from a gunman

 

and down south a whole town is

hiding in attics from their

pride and furniture determined

that the past will not repeat itself

 

and I keep score as I scrub the floor

fighting battles over ground

flooded and drained a hundred times

watching my arms rise and fall

 

and the back of my mind is

flashing blue and white, pleading

shut up shut up shut up sometimes

a grenade is just ripe fruit ready to share

 

 

 

Born and raised in London, England, Andrew Kreider has lived for over twenty years in northern Indiana.

He has published two chapbooks, and has an active poetry blog under the title Penguin Poems. http://thepenguinpoet.com

Three Poems by Janet Rice Carnahan

BLISTERING TRUTH

 

Smoldering,

Before a strike,

 

A flickering flash,

Not yet blazing,

 

Heated,

Yet contained,

 

Hesitantly brilliant,

Awaiting the rush of flame,

 

Inching towards ignition,

As if some undetermined time,

 

Sits on its ultimate demise,

Until ash,

 

Falls away,

Revealing,

 

A state of inspiration,

Needed to fuel,

 

Imagination . . .

 

Into a true reality!

 

 

TAKEN ON A BREEZE

 

Like leaves,

Surrendering,

 

Air currents gaining strength,

Twisting in fate’s arms,

 

Trusting without question,

Letting go, an art,

 

Birds follow suit,

Allowing breezes,

 

Up and through,

Guiding them,

 

Along some predetermined,

Perhaps unknown,

 

Path,

Not understood,

 

By simple navigation,

How freeing,

 

Their complete . . .

Release!

 

 

WINGED RESPONSE

 

Gathering feathers,

Brings blessings,

 

A sense of freedom,

Joyful opening,

 

Reminders,

Extending our selves,

 

Inviting in,

Growth,

 

Unseen,

Undefined,

 

Seeking only a wider,

Perspective,

 

Life’s never ending,

Response,

 

Given a chance,

Considering expanded . . .

 

Advance!

 

 

 

 

 

Janet Rice Carnahan lives in Laguna Beach, California, among artists, photographers and writers. Born on the northern California coast, she’s inspired by the sea, a joy shared with her husband, adult children, family and friends. Janet’s published work includes a cover photo, caption and poems in an anthology, “Prompted: An International Collection of Poems”, December 2011. Recent poems were published in, “Pyrokinection”, “Jellyfish Whispers”, “The Camel Saloon”, “The Mind[less] Muse” and “Three Line Poetry”.

Two Poems from Bill Jansen

regular bride

Medieval butterflies, or flies on medieval butter
block entrance to temple dedicated to Dedication
or the subsidy thereof,
then start a wave with stained glass wings.

Hellfire launched by a surviving Intelligence Officer
from our bunker in Desert Springs, California,
not far from the Tennis Tournament,
an interesting bagel or bugle on his desk.

The target back-dated, left to sparkle,
like gold earrings on a contrite mummy.

Then just kidding around with the right people,
s'blood, was that you Bernardo?
Now for the game, this time in...

The bride looking like a regular bride,
there amid the tractor parts.



invisible tyranny

later I am an earlier rocking motion
I got from a certain detachment
which had gone missing since arrived in Madrid.

the teleprompter snaps off the dream
and I clear my throat
to deliver the revised message.

--dear Senoritas, Providence clings to the gekko
in the room with two ceilings.

this puts the people loitering on the plaza
in the mood to kick each other in the shins.

then I'm appointed the Supreme Judge of Madrid.
but they forget to tell me
and I continue to hide the shadow of a fly
from the post card police.



Bill Jansen lives in Forest Grove, Oregon and has work published in
The Centrifugal Eye, Cirque and other ezines.

A Poem by Dr. Yoosaph Kandy

Tug of war

On either side

Conscience at war

On the edge of sword.

 

The eyes hooked

And stoned.

The blanket

a garland

Dream

a jungle of bush.

 

Traffic heavy

Twin-sided

Speeding fast

Eyelashes blinking

Pathos

Read as dead.

 

Newspaper leaves

Executors

Of thunder

On thorns spread

Faces fill in.

 

At the fall

Of the tug brawny

A heavy clash

of applause.

 

 

 

Dr. Yoosaph is Assistant professor in the department of english, Calicut university, Kerala, India. He has published several poems and translations in Malayalam language as well as english. He also has many English articles to his credit, in both national and international journals. His book on Asif Currimbhoy's plays has been published from Germany, UK and US in the name Yoosaph Aayalakkandy. 

Two Poems by Ian C. Smith

Rendezvous

 

Lives reflect like a film by Resnais,

children, divorces, loving well,

some storm, some calm, loving no longer.

Days drain into the gulf of middle age.

He remembers curls on her nape,

her head turned to blow smoke away.

 

Tracking her, logic gets ambushed,

foolish assumptions, a wrong address.

A postal worker, an obvious TV fan

with an old-time attitude to service,

places a newspaper ad., proving

the Dead Letter Office still has a pulse.

 

Her answering machine a reprieve

but as he backslides into relief

his phone, shrill, throbbing, stabs him.

No time to organize his thoughts,

he clears his throat, slowly reaches out.

A lot can change over twenty-five years.

 

The rush hour trains shaking their floor,

blood stirring under his scars.

He presses fingers to temples,

ponders a decision about a haircut

willing himself to match her bravery

as questions needing details line up.

 

 

 

 

Balancing Acts

 

 

In the chill of her parents’ spare room

where she once joined twin beds

back when they disapproved of him

she shrinks, balancing at the bed’s hard edge,

hugging the secrets of her blowzy body.

First, he tries common sense, then foolery.

She believes he aches with lust, not love,

knows her mind doesn’t impress him,

counts days remaining until her 40^th.

 

Earlier, their L-plate daughter driving fast,

him talking charming nonsense, impressing her

while she’s with their luggage she always packs,

kangaroos had bounced across the road

so close to silencing them all.

She hates his façade of recklessness

in the face of prospective disaster.

Yet more self-indulgence she thinks,

wanting him to just shut the fuck up.

 

Before she yelled Slow down damn you,

Worry a fluttering pennant,

they had overtaken a unicyclist,

his jacket puffed up by slipstreams.

She felt concern for him juggling fatigue,

flying dust, debris, rain like nails,

maintaining his composure, brave

mile after wind-buffeting mile

while an uncaring world hurtled by.

 

The next day she jogs around the country town,

winter morning light brilliant, cleansing.

She had turned to him, gruffly at first,

when he reached across, his hand hot.

Submissive, quickened, she felt in control,

her pliancy his Braille, his weakness.

He seemed not to notice her plumper flesh.

When they got up he had pinched her arse.

She breathes hard, a watching crow cries out. 

 

 

 

Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in Axon:Creative Explorations,The Best Australian Poetry,Chiron Review, Island, Southerly,& Westerly His fifth book is Contains Language,Ginninderra Press (Adelaide). He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia. 

A Poem by D.M. Aderibigbe

GENUINENESS

Inside the world we created with love and honesty,
Beside the root of a civilization of nests we rest.

We study for a degree in comparative studies, in the jungle.
The male bird and his wife,
You are
Who's happier?

This is an examination question,
Your response, a total failure like
A shoo-in that crashes out in the preliminary stage of
A competition.

The birds can't be as happy as we are. Their
Union will wither before she lays the sweet liquid he banks in her,

What is genuine about a lonely widow's smile?



D.M Aderibigbe is a 23-year old writer from Lagos, Nigeria, an undergraduate student of History and Strategic Studies of the University of Lagos. He writes poetry, fiction, non-fiction, plays and lyrics. His work has been published or forthcoming in the UK, Canada, Australia, Nepal and the United States by, Vox Poetica, Pressboard press, UP Literature, HUSMW Press, The New Black Magazine, Misfits' Miscellany, Thickjam, Ditch Poetry, Bluepepper,The Applicant, Rusty Nail, Jellyfish Whispers and Wordriot. His debut novel Sisyphean, will be published in America, soon. He lives and schools in Lagos.

Two Poems by Anthony Ward

Bridge at Giverny

Monet’s bridge

In flagrant with colour,

Melting into the mind

A disarray of reality,

Licks of chromatic flames

Incinerating convention,

Enraged with passion,

Consummated by consumption,

The combustion of fragility

Ever fervent.

 

 

Deflated

My world’s been flattened

With the sun shining below the surface

Leaving me perplexed in darkness

The moon spotlighting my evasiveness

As I hide myself away.

 

 

 

Anthony tends to fidget with his thoughts in the hope of laying them to rest. He has managed to lay them in a number of literary magazines including Enhance, Drunk Monkeys, Speech Therapy, Turbulence, Underground, Jellyfish Whispers, Ginger Piglet, Torrid Literature Journal and The Rusty Nail, amongst others.

Two Poems by Alan Britt

POET TALKING TO THE WIND

The poet says,

Look inside that black lilac,

inside that fist of roses

shivering above your head!

Circling crows squeal like brakes

on a UPS truck hauling boxes

addressed in melancholy handwriting

to no one in particular.

The wind invites the poet

to shift his waist

against the cool, white vinyl straps

of a white patio chair.

I know, says the poet.

Each time I'm here I dream of impossibilities

far outnumbering wrinkled avocados

mummifying wooden bins at the local market!

The wind shakes her head. She already

knows that those narrow coffins

of avocados are disorganized,

like a delicious chimera of impossibilities

 

OCTOBER EVENING

The poet loses his hearing

and his memory.

That's not fair!  Even
Beethoven had memory!

So one night the poet enters a tavern,
taps a saffron beer bottle
against the sentimental beat
of Country Western music
and notices every detail
of every pea green tattoo spread
across every pale cleavage
hunched across the dimly lit bar.

Chameleons leaking from the smoky eyes
of every patron makes him feel like a fist!

 

Alan Britt read poems at the World Trade Center/Tribute WTC Visitor Center (TributeWTC.org) in Manhattan/NYC, April 2012, at the We Are You Project (WeAreYouProject.Org) Wilmer Jennings Gallery, East Village/NYC, April 2012, and at New Jersey City University's Ten Year 9/11 Commemoration in Jersey City, NJ, September 2011. His poem, "September 11, 2001," appeared in International Gallerie: Poetry in Art/Art in Poetry Issue, v13 No.2 (India): 2011. His recent books are Alone with the Terrible Universe (2011), Greatest Hits (2010), Hurricane (2010), Vegetable Love (2009), Vermilion (2006), Infinite Days (2003), Amnesia Tango (1998) and Bodies of Lightning (1995). The Poetry Library (www.poetrymagazines.org.uk) providing a free access digital library of 20^th & 21^st century English poetry magazines with the aim of preserving them for the future has included Britt’s work published in Fire (UK) in their project. Britt’s work also appears in the new anthologies, The Robin Hood Book: Poets in Support of the Robin Hood Tax, by Caparison, United Kingdom, 2012, American Poets Against the War, Metropolitan Arts Press, Chicago/Athens/Dublin, 2009 and Vapor transatlántico (Transatlantic Steamer), a bi-lingual anthology of Latin American and North American poets, Hofstra University Press/Fondo de Cultura Económica de Mexico/Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos de Peru, 2008. Readings & Presentations: Panel Chair for Poetry Studies & Creative Poetry for the PCA/ACA Conference 2008 in Boston, Ramapo College in Mahwah, NJ (2009 & 2012), the WPA Gallery/Ward-Pound Ridge Reservation in Cross River, NY (2008), Ultra Violet Studio, Chelsea/NYC (2008 & 2009), White Marsh Library, Baltimore (2011 & 2012), Enoch Pratt Free Library (Canton Branch) Baltimore (2011), Pedestal Magazine Reading at the Writers Center, Bethesda, MD (2012). Alan currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University and lives in Reisterstown, Maryland with his wife, daughter, two Bouviers des Flandres, one Bichon Frise and two formerly feral cats. Links: http://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/potw.html#fp1;

http://spectrumofpoeticfire.com/Reader%20Directory/Alan_Britt.htm;

http://theliteraryunderground.org/wiki/index.php?title=Alan_Britt;

http://www.therecusant.org.uk/#/morrison-on-saponia-and-britt/4556998367; and

http://aliensareus.wordpress.com/

A Poem by Emma Ambos

Napoleon

 

Here, the stark mark

of human ossification

lets blood-less and breathing

like new mares

 

smacked of diseases

like water, it dries

it drips

it becomes

the skin

 

nerves snip-snapping

Nene geese on the breath of sky

 

mother mumbles of

Eden-lore

and rubs her ruddy

toothless mouth

jaw-to jaw

 

the tale told of

‘the world is yours’

 

and in conquering you

bougainvillea branches

from key to key

and the ventricles

of your heart

 

curl up like snails

100 degrees at noon

Emma Ambos is a writer with itchy fingers and a healthy admiration for life is all it's wild ways.

A Poem by Tamara Simpson

The Bar

On aerial planes

I turn,

silver heels slashing the wrist

of land before the ocean

and the sand.

My dear, your eyes are moons

as they watch me

dance and pivot.

Such an external change!

You must think me possessed.

But it's not my demons

who make me dance.

I offer you my hand, smiles

dripping from my fingers.

They close on air;

you step away,

shaking your head.

I stumble, but raise

my hands valiantly

to the stars, refusing to fall,

to fall.

I dress my pain

in the swelling gowns

of euphoria. All I want now

Is to escape you

All I want

is to be free.

The wind murmurs brilliantly,

sadly. I turn from it,

salt-water flecks my cheek.

Ocean-tears,

not mine.

The tide changes;

nothing I can say

will prevent it. Perhaps

if you had danced with me!

The moon recedes;

my bare feet

sink coldly

into the quickening sand.

 

 

 

Tamara Simpson is a current student University of Western Australia who spends most of her time writing poetry and fiction when she should be studying. She has had previous work published in the Road Not Taken Journal of Formal Poetry, Every Day Poets Magazine, and Open Minds Quarterly.

A Poem by Duane Locke

TERRESTRIAL ILLUMINATION NO. 268

What exists, the alterity, and even one’s self
Can be converted into off-white colored ashes with dark edges
That are crumbling into oblivion after a burning at a steel stake
By an auto-da-fe of the human mind that believes in the absolutism
Of either common sense, reason, logic, mathematics, or the occult. All this
Is unknown to a giraffe stretching his neck to reach a large
Leaf in shape of a parabola, or a giraffe that is painted as
Dancing on piano keys and playing Chopin. We lived
In a world of chaos and order, either not understood, and talk
About things we have never seen: Greek Temples, Italian olive trees, Utopias
And Dantean paradisos—that even if looked at or journied through
As a tourist we are were not seen. We assume from scientific hearsay
There are flurries of particles and their hurricanes or siestas keeps
Us alive. Some believe, some blaspheme, both only antics for the sake
Of being picked by the thorns when kissed by the petals of die
Nemandsrose (Paul Celan).


Duane Locke lives in Tampa, Florida near anhinga,
gallinules, raccoons, alligators, etc.
He has published 6,680 poems, includes 29 books of poems. His latest
book publication, April 2012,