A Poem by Bianca Davies-Mears

I Watch the Crows' Breath Fly Across Purple Ink Stained Sky

Jack Frost has kissed your cheeks and although I am a bit
jealous, I wish he'd do it a hundred more time because
I've never seen you look so beautiful.

There's a pressure on my chest and my breath is short,
but refreshing.

And though I would love to deny this familiar feeling,
seasons change, and now the snow is falling for you
darling.

Just like you,

It's cold, but beautiful.

Bianca Davies-Mears is a junior English Educator major at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois.  She hopes to become a high school English teacher and encourage more creative writing in her future students.  She spends her free time watching TV, reading books, and listening to music because she loves to take journeys through many different imaginary worlds.

Three Poems by Weldon Sandusky

EXXON/MOBIL

©

 

2013

 

I worked twenty years

At night, none the less.

A gas station.

A niteman. A cashier.

Coffee, Cigarettes,

Drive-offs, robbery.

Sleet, ice and snow.

I loved it. Free to laugh.

Free to cry. I could jump up and down.

I could yell.

Morning would roll around

My relief would show.

Hello!

I’d go.

Good-bye.

Coming again. Coming Again.

With managers who were thieves

And people all in a hurry.

“I can’t start my car. Would you call me a cab?”

Thank you, Come Again.

“I’ve lost my keys. Call the police!”

Thank you, Come Again

A neon world

Red, White and Blue.

A dark place

The price sticking high in the night.

Years flew by

When 11:00 AM one day

HEART ATTACK!

Then a card saying:

Thank you.

Get well. Come again.

Exxon/Mobil.

　

 

　

 

1515 13^th Street

 

When my father died

We moved to the Hill Country.

And when my aunt died

We moved to Lubbock.

Blue Northern from the Panhandle

Blinding dust storms out of the West.

My mother’s other sister

Was our keeper and provider and we

Were not unlike prisoners.

Me in high school.

My mother sick in bed.

The house was a two-story red brick

Rooming house with a Church of Christ

Behind and a funeral home cater-corner.

My aunt kept her deceased husband’s

Bible in a closet that like a refrigerator

Gave me a place to go

And look as though

There’d be something to see

Or someone I could maybe talk to.

 

 

 

JOHNSON CHEVROLET

©

2013

 

Desperation leads me to

A new car make-ready. My wife

Sells them. I prep them.

Careful to vacuum, shine and chamois.

I’m in the basement.

The car dealership above.

Used Cars is across the street.

I deliver the cars with a fresh

Paper floor mat.

Courteous and proper.

Failure has greeted me

Like an cold friend

Hand outstretched and A Big Smile.

Divorce turns on a pinhead.

I sip coffee in the café

And try to appear to be a

College Graduate hopelessly empty

And wishful, however.

People laugh behind my back.

I come to suspect

They “test drive” my wife

Then sadistically bring the car in

For a good vacuum and a

Run through the car wash.

One day I find a spot

On the rear seat

And begin to whimper then cry.

I go home

And get the bus

To psychiatric emergency

At the County Hospital.

 

 

 

Weldon graduated from Texas Tech University in 1968-a B.A. in English. He then got an M.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin and a law degree (J.D. l975) from the same school. Divorce followed as did commitment to , first, the private psychiatric hospital, Timberlawn, in Dallas, and , later, the State Mental Asylum in Terrell , Texas. Mr. Sandusky petitioned for habeas corpus claiming a conspiracy to unlawfully commit him existed in violation of his constitutional rights.  Upon release, Weldon got a job at Exxon/Mobil where he worked twenty years as a cashier-nightman. During August, 2005he underwent open heart surgery at St. Paul’s Hospital in Dallas and have since been declared totally disabled. He has coronary heart disease.

A Poem by Austin McCarron

The Age of Aquarius

I sit by the grave of water,
drunker than fire,
burning my crops of sea.

I live on rain, with my skin
of dry diseases,
struggling with the inscription
on my map of death.

The sun drinks of my emptiness,
on my tongue of dry wells.
At night stars of dead companions
approach
me like birds at the summit of lakes.

Austin's most recent work appeared in Robin Hood Anthology, Message in a Bottle, Decanto and others.  Star sign Aquarius.

A Poem by Daniel N. Flanagan

Drive Home

&  what if our lives are nothing but a figment
Of someone else's imagination
Our individual lives are all another individual's dream

Everyone thinks they are unique though
Esoteric though

I wrote this at a red traffic light
& it turned green & the sports car honked at me
With fury!
He has yet to realize he is not real.

I drove past picketers with political picket signs
& they were passionate about a dream
& so I honked at them
Gave a thumbs up to support another man's dream

We are all dreaming
But not all of us are dreamers.

Daniel N. Flanagan is a Worcester, MA native; currently writing a novella, while taking a year off from college. His most recent short story, "Daddy's Girl", has been published in The Commonline Journal. He has two stories scheduled for publication in January '14, and one for February '14; "Dylan; & The Hooker Formerly Known As Tiffany" has been accepted by Beyond Imagination, "Bathroom Tale: 2" will appear in Danse Macabre du Jour and "To Paul, With Love" will be published in Yellow Mama. He has previously been featured in the publishing blog, Aberration Labyrinth for his poem "Writer". He also has three poems in Framingham State University's literary magazine The Onyx (Spring '12). Check him out at www.DanFlanagan.webs.com and follow him @DanielNFlanagan.

A Poem by Mantz Yorke

Black Hole

 

That was the moment of crushing,

 

lying sleepless in the cold

hour before dawn, afraid to ask

and yet not ask: you, curled

from my questioning touch,

silent. 

 

Light bursting inward,

fading.

 

That was the beginning of it.

 

Now the shrivelling

winds rip

the last leaves from the trees, and frosts blacken

the dahlias in our garden: I see

the world engraved

with cold, and still

no snow to soften the ice-keen

talons of the merciless hawk.

 

And what of you, Orion,

stretched out across this wintry sky?

Is not your virility

a mere illusion?

Has not the sword

stabbed

deep in your gut?

 

Like you, I am silent.

 

Somewhere in your frame,

the astronomers tell us,

atoms are falling

inwards,

inwards,

beyond the reach of comprehension,

their radiance hovering,

quivering,

imprisoned by implosion.

 

This dark space is all that binds us.

I await new constellations:

will you, Leo,

Virgo,

Serpens,

in slow procession,

help me bear the pall

of Orion's springtime burial?

 

I circle this horizon, accelerating

inward, yet centrifugal:

a temporary equilibrium, this balance

point of crisis, this moment

when the wavering will

must make its choice -

existence

or extinction.

 

 

 

Mantz Yorke is a former teacher living in Manchester, England.  His work has appeared in the series 'Best of Manchester Poets' and in various publications, including the anthology 'Of Sun and Sand'.

 

A Poem by Theresa A. Cancro

The Mermaids Won't Tell

The mermaids won't tell
of the myriad dreams drifting out to sea
that you burnished with soft youth,
then abandoned once caustic questions posed
by grey-haired mere-men of dry bones, petrified ears
and glass houses filled your head.

Nightingales in oak trees won't retrieve
the secrets stuffed in knots on hot
summer nights, chock full of adventure,
blisters and sweet laughter, open to the constellations
granting all creatures the right of passage
when they listen, heed full passion.

Gnashing bears won't stop, stalk past you today,
'though in old guise they sniffed, relished
your air, stroked hard-packed earth where
bare feet hammered before diving
among ghee pools, faces slathered in voracious skies
marling innocence and carnal desire.

I would give you my broken basket filled with icons,
a reliquary of love pilgrims who never lost their aim,
but the maze you desire hobbles, blinds you --
you'll never reach the center
to find your way
out.

Theresa A. Cancro (Wilmington, Delaware, USA) writes poetry and fiction.  Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming on several online sites and in print, including Three Line Poetry, Dead Snakes, Napalm and Novocain, Jellyfish Whispers,  Stormcloud Poets Anthology, A Handful of Stones, and A Hundred Gourds.

Two Poems by Dr. Smita Sriwastav

She wore a marigold in her hair

She wore a marigold in her hair
-the country bumpkin amongst flowers
its artless, summery grin
trying to add a sparkle
to her fickle pansy smiles.

Once she'd worn orchids
braided in those silken depths
in exotic swirls of perfumed poetry,
when herself a lyrical sigh gazing at life
with wide almond-eyed naiveté.

She is a fistful of words
that she sings in fractured lines,
her croon a stilted echo of the obsolete
its fragments glued by self-concocted phrases~
just to hear vestigial vocal cords
croak out strings of hollowed syllables.

Her existence bracketed between
grocery lists and petty dinner table woes,
whistled urgency of cooked meals
the only noise bursting into her daydreams,
she whispers comforting words
to herself just to fill the emptiness
that yawns betwixt
clothesline trysts in the sunshine
and sleepy lullabies crooned
to the howling crib at midnight,
while her fragile sleep is
oft lulled by snored indifference.

Love is like wallpaper
carefully chosen and then just existing~
a dried rose once treasured
within sepia pages of mottled reverie.

It is revived at times in echoed smiles
or a softly whispered peck on eroded cheeks-
a firefly kissing fate-lines on palm
before twilight loses
its transient grasp on acrylics
and night intervenes...



She murmured her angst to the silence…

Sorrow: found herself
a fistful of metaphors in ~ tempest smudged skies,
a deer in deserts chasing mirages,
a bruise staining an ache,
colors erased by twilight’s washcloth,
rain-withered rosebuds,
a festering cry of barren womb,
vacant eyes of orphaned innocence,
autumnal penury of deciduas,
tarnished December sunshine.

Sorrow: is the season
~ a lingering shadow; a fragile sigh
between russet autumn
and laughter of a summer cascade.
The murmur of a dream losing itself
in concentric ambiguities
of onion-skin slumber.
Sorrow: a whisper between
flimsy winter mists, its
gloomy syllables voiced by snowflakes,
falls in commissure between night and dawn
when even stars have dozed off
and the moon is fading away.

Sorrow : the grit left after joy slips away;
the sigh gasped when helium balloon
of transient bliss escapes~
a floating bubble bursting into soapy sprinkles—
just another face
of emptiness, loneliness, longing…

Dr. Smita Sriwastav is an M.B.B.S. doctor with a passion for poetry and literature.  She has always expressed her innermost thoughts and sentiments through the medium of poetry. A feeling of inner tranquility and bliss captures her soul whenever she pens her verse. Nature has been the most inspiring force in molding the shape of her writings. She has published two books and has published poems in journals like the Rusty Nail ( Rule of Survival)and Contemporary Literary Review India (spring lingers),four and twenty, Paradise Review, Literary Juice, Blast Furnace and many more and one of her poems “Unsaid Goodbyes” was published in an anthology called ‘Inspired by Tagore’ published by Sampad and British Council. She has written poetry all her life and aims to do so forever.

A Poem by Michael Lee Johnson

Empty Branch Trees

 

I am the purchaser of your life,

I walk in wild wind in late fall-

dream sweet, dream often,

empty branch trees and leaves

look for you there.

But you are an isolationist,

baron, desolate, stark naked

tan buttocks touching shrine

on a half moon night.

You are worn like moth wings,

infected flannel

with all ex-lovers

coming out of the covers and sheets

various men you have dated for over 30 years-

men that now are a dash, some dead in time.

Sweet body builder,

alpha female your evaluation

of self-goes up, then down,

yoyo clumsy, temperature,

verbal disbursements

inconsistent with morning

sunrise and sets.

You orchestrate your life

tossing dice in dark

alleyways on south side

Chicago predawn streets.

Of the wings I displayed

for you, doves speaking

expressions in time for you,

wings beat in lost melodies-

gone for all I account for,

nest to ruins,

egg to shell,

the love once displayed for you-

crow wings beat, blind my hindsight vision out.

Empty branches, memories gone,

highway emptied to hell.

 

 

 

MICHAEL LEE JOHNSON lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era:  now known as the Itasca, IL. poet.  Today he is a poet, freelance writer, photographer who experiments with poetography (blending poetry with photography), and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois, who has been published in more than 750 small press magazines in 26 countries, he edits 7 poetry sites.  Michael is the author of The Lost American:  From Exile to Freedom (136 pages book), several chapbooks of poetry, including From Which Place the Morning Rises and Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems.  He also has over 69 poetry videos on YouTube.

Links:  http://poetryman.mysite.com/

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/promomanusa

https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000058168/The-Lost-American.aspx

http://www.amazon.com/The-Lost-American-Exile-Freedom/dp/0595460917

 

 

A Poem by Changming Yuan

Directory of Destinies

 

Monday

            -Monday’s child is fair of face

Beginning of endless beginnings

When we start running between

Sun shine and electric light, caring

No more about the moon on moon’s day 

 

Tuesday

            -Tuesday’s child is full of grace

Under Tiw’s rule, every law is

Established to stage war upon

The unlucky, who keep setting

Fires to avoid miss fortunes

 

Wednesday

            -Wednesday’s child is full of woe

Right in the middle of laboring

Even god of mercury turns green

As it persists in fasting

Far beyond the hump

 

Thursday

            -Thursday’s child has far to go

God of thunder, man of wonder

We will continue despite hunger

Until we cannot go any farther

Or uphold our spirits together

 

Friday

            -Friday’s child is loving and giving

POETS day, TGIF, Day of Venus

Unlucky for those trying to catch

A few fish in the open sea, but lucky 

For whoever is swimming ashore

 

Saturday

            -Saturday’s child works hard for a living

Though confined to their earthy coffins

All vampires are eager to go hunting

Both within the nightmares of mad dogs

And outside the shrinking orbit of Saturn

 

Sunday

            - The child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

East or west

All for a rest

When wanderers doze off in the sky

Meditators wake up to a distant cry

 

 

 

Changming Yuan, 5-time Pushcart nominee and author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and Landscaping (2013), grew up in rural China and currently works as an English tutor in Vancouver, where he co-edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan (Poetry subs welcome at editors.pp@gmail.com). Recently interviewed by PANK, Yuan has poetry appear in Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Exquisite Corpse, London Magazine, Threepenny Review and 739 others across 28 countries. 

A Poem by Cherise Wyneken

Reading the Signs

Ancients watched the night stars

spill from the sky

and wondered,

what changes do the gods divine?

 

“We’ll wean him

off the respirator –

less oxygen each day,”

the doctor says,

 

I watch him now, plugged into

machines, gasping for his life,

and wonder,

am I the one being weaned?

 

 

 

Cherise Wyneken’s individual articles, stories, and poems have appeared in a variety of publications, two full collections of her poetry, two chapbooks of her poems, a spiritual memoir, a novel, a children’s book, and a children’s audiocassette, plus her latest book, “STIR-FRIED MEMORIES,” stories about her life.   Cherise has also been writing a poetry column for the Oakland Examiner’s online issue at:  www.examiner.com/poetry-in-oakland/cherise-wyneken and was nominated for the 2013 Poetry Pushcart Prize.

A Poem by Kristina England

Faith

Girl says she does not give a doodle
about sun, moon, or hemisphere.
Girl holds stuffed puppy dog, will not let go
as much as boy tries to coax her.
When pressed, she pauses, too thoughtful
for her age, says nothing could make monsters
as scary as parents, not even some zodiac
with symbols like fish or scorpions.
Little boy frowns, looks around corner.
Big feet stomp back and forth.
Man packs bags, woman paints nails.
It's the same old song and dance.
He turns to his sis-sis and whispers:
"They're the reason I need to believe."

Kristina England is a Virgo residing in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her poetry and fiction is published or forthcoming in Extract(s), Gargoyle, New Verse News, The Story Shack, The Quotable, Tipton Poetry Journal, and other magazines

A Poem by H. Edgar Hix

Virgone

A kiss. Another.
A parting of cloth.
A parting of flesh.
Am I a Libra now?

H. Edgar Hix is a Virgo who lives in Minnesota, a long way away from his birthing nest in Oklahoma. He and his wife, Julie, are the neighborhood crazy cat lady with seven cats and one little bichon who holds his own with the rest. Hix has been publishing poetry for over 40 years.
 

A Poem by R.K. Singh

Golden Reward

 

With sudden twists and turns

popping up each new day

life still awaits intrigues

through meandering pathways

I search the gold light

the rising Capricorn

held for a Sunday child

 

the labyrinths are dark

and scary but I know

the way in is the way out

I can't trip along the way

like others in blind alleys

the guardian angel 

leads me to golden reward

 

 

 

Ram Krishna Singh, born 31 Dec 1950 and a Capricornian Indian English poet, has been writing for over three decades. He has 14 volumes of poetry to his credit, including Sense and Silence: Collected Poems (2010) and New and Selected Poems Haiku and Tanka (2012). He teaches English language skills to students of earth and mineral sciences at Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, India. web: rksinghpoet.blogspot.in

A Poem by Ahab Hamza

Archers Lament

 

This isn't a night to stop

Moonlight, a shining sky

Points to a weeping heaven,

*

Those silver kisses falling

Soothe the earth like raindrops

And not a cloud to be seen,

*

Those grumpy old women

Frowning themselves to sleep

Evil eyes aglow, I couldn't care 

 

less

*

From within me, anything

Comes. From the flame

I fly, lovingly dazed

*

Your grace, scars exquisite

Beyond nature. They sing

To me and I've answered

*

The sweetest pain upon your back

Draws me inexplicably, stupidly

A pursuit tortuous, gratifying

*

Here we'll sit by the fire

My soul to rest, your heart to 

 

swell

Upon thwarting death again

*

The banal forgotten

Worn out, my spirit would sleep

And yet I wouldn't change a thing

*

Promise us misery and adventure

Hold me and I'll kiss you always

Worship the altar of your angel's 

 

wings

 

 

 

Ahab Hamza is a university student born in Birkenhead on 27th November 1993. He has been featured in The Recusant's The Robin Hood Book anthology, Forward Poetry's Animal Antics anthology of 2012 and the spring 2012 issue of Inclement Magazine. He was also short listed for the 2012 erbacce prize for poetry

Two Poems by Colin Dodds

The Patron Saint of Transitions

The toothless man in a cowboy hat

collects the bottles off the tables.

“I’m tired kids,

I woke up before you were born,” he says.

He’ll tell you about when the year had 360 days.

The bartenders give him soda and quarters

for the pool table.

He gets an ideal spot to wait

for his luck to change.

Scary Silent Prayer

Above us patrons, lost in our devotions

to the blather, the stunt and the oily coast, 

a mood stitches the horizon down.

It is not dramatic, one more failure.

But it takes a thousand failures

to make a person, and a few billion people

to make us feel like this.

And god all muddy, here we are.

“What I do to entertain myself

is just that, what I do.

But all the while,

what I’ve really had in mind was…”

someone croons into the space

between jukebox songs.

Fraud our fodder,

give me something to say

to the man on my left, the woman by the door

and the bartender before me.

Anything except the scary silent prayer

that becomes the floors and doors

of this room.

Colin Dodds grew up in Massachusetts and completed his education in New York City.  He's the author of several novels, including The Last Bad Job, which the late Norman Mailer touted as showing "something that very few writers have; a species of inner talent that owes very little to other people."  Dodds' screenplay, Refreshment -- A Tragedy, was named a semi-finalist in 2010 American Zoetrope Contest.  His poetry has appeared in more than ninety publications, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, Samantha.

Three poems by Felino A. Soriano

from antiphonies & spectrums


as when this mentions

each curl embeds a signature
erasing prior
           generational fantasies       from
figments and all aspects of
tonal
-imaginary spectrums

these curls are morning (pluralized among momentary resting)
and

inform the early-rising caws of
crows' separating curtain
                                                their wings revealing
splay as art as insignia's
contoured abstraction of sound
and
          rhythm's entrance onto
burgeon's reflectional
persuasion and
                                    realized recollection to                                 commence



Of an evening's version of sound

each aggregated evening
moments climb gates leading
into angled versions of light's
vocal insinuations

with legs of alabaster clarity
voices of gray and dusk's
wandering wardrobe
clothing absence in the
mobility of sound's
always moving reconstructed
rhythms --

these rhythms engage and enthrall and
redefine spontaneity's oval brand of
return's
unsolicited becoming



this corner, then that -- paralleling faces

more than,                       more so than
                              or
         much
forward-finding need to analyze an environment's
enabled tableaus

the faces
find their voices among braids of unsaid
transactions
the shine of tonal jewelry
enlisted onto physiognomy's imaginary
images, such in the facet of spreading jazz and
the wind's vocal cycles
                   onto these bodies and brand of
interactive leanings and prayer of prosaic curving
carving a hopeful mathematics into
equating collocated happenings, these

needed truancies from forming segregated
mobility among concerts of same-style
impersonations

Felino A. Soriano is a member of The Southern Collective Experience.  His poetry finds its foundation in created coocurrences, predicated on his strong connection to various idioms of jazz music.  His poetry appears in various online and print publications, with recent poetry collections including Of these voices (whitesky ebooks, 2013) Pathos|paticular invocation (Fowlpox Press, 2013) Extolment in the praising exhalation of jazz (Kind of a Hurricane Press, 2013) and Hinge Trio (La Alamedo Press, 2012). He lives in California with his wife and family and is the director of supported living and independent living programs providing supports to adults with developmental disabilities.  Links to his published and forthcoming poems, books, interviews, images, etc. can be found at www.felinoasoriano.info. 

Two Poems by Jack T. Marlowe

seize this

 

you have

met the

enemy

and it is

i, sneers

the tin

weather-

cock in

the mirror

 

the epi-

center-

piece

of your

shifting

fault line

 

about to

turn from

kissing

the glass

to licking
ambition's

sputtering

abyss

 

an almost

shameless

graduation

 

but when

tomorrow

brings its

stinging

aftertaste

you will

struggle to

remember

whose ad-

vice it was

to seize

the day

 

you and

your little

fistful of

thorns

 

 

 

my left hand

 

dear parasite

your name

doesn't

answer to

memory  

although

you do

look

familiar

a poor

relation

seen

from a

distance

a near

enemy

my dear

enemy

an unwel-

come

guest

the

clumsy

beast

at the

bar, a

harbin-

ger of

dead

fish, a

hanger-

on, the

hairy

wineskin

tugging

at my

arm, a

jaundiced

paw, a

phalanx

of bitter

bones

playing

at war

numb

from the  

carpal

theater

 

 

 

 

 

Jack T. Marlowe is a gentleman rogue from Dallas, TX.  A writer of poetry and fiction and a veteran of the open mic, his work has appeared in Handful of Dust, Rusty Truck, Bone Orchard Poetry,  Napalm and Novocain, Zombie Logic, Tendril and many other zines (both online and in print). Jack is also the mad editor of Gutter Eloquence Magazine (http://www.guttereloquence.com).

 

 

Two Poems by Sharon Rothenfluch Cooper

Wishes
 

Thoughts about disappointments

rarely run away with purpose.

Wishes are only whims and head

droops in mocking silhouette

formed to placate the moment.
 

There's rhythm in time's passage

that's touched with the barest

of breeze to soothe taut nerves.
 

Lips taste curious excitement

and my strings shake

with calculated risk - desire a magnet.

     I tremble, I want, I need...


 

Sculpted Imagination
 

In that floating moment

before morning

when night turns

from the rising light,

dreams quiver

in a nauseous state.
 

I feel like -

I'm holding my breath,

waiting for tragedy

to bleed me of sap.
 

In the shiver of morning,

daylight knocks

and the dream winks

and closes its eyes

as mine pop open.
 

With throbbing pulse

the suffocating fear

washes away.


 

Sharon Rothenfluch Cooper’s poetry has appeared in numerous International, hard copy and internet magazines.  Her chapbook, ‘Reach Beyond’ was winner of a MAG Press, International Chapbook Competition  and she has two chapbooks, Mood Magic and A Slice of Life published by Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry.  Twenty-three of her poems were presented in the play, ‘Soldier’s Heart’ to Sold Out audiences and recorded on DVD. Her latest published pieces are 'featured' in the Summer issue of Poetry Quarterly and published in the October issue of Flutter.