Three Poems by Les Merton

In The Garden

 

Eve reached

              beyond knowledge

            through icy leaves

            past imagination

            into shadow

 

her innocent hands

cupped succulent temptation

 

her body trembled

she thought

of Adam, of Adam, of Adam…

 

       

Papyrus

 

In Cairo

at the Pyramid Street Museum.

 

Blue depth shadow

sunwashed with twilight rests.

 

The Nile reflects quivering

moons of felucca sails.

 

Here feathered arms protect

the dead of a thousand years,

 

Isis is unveiled

in flights of fantasy

 

by delicate brush strokes

and generations of knowledge.

 

Sandalwood

 

The fragrant heartwood

incense makes me think

of a soap never used,

of a guru never found,

of a time when…

 

Everything made sense.

 

San Francisco

was as close as the flower

in your hair.

 

Love was all that was needed

to change the world.

 

India

wasn’t that far away -

 

Sanskrit

was perfect for Om.

 

And the lingering

aroma of Sandalwood

is the evergreen link

to a wise old saying

from the east:

 

When the time is right

your guru will find you.

 

 

 

Les Merton is Cornish and proud of it. He lives in an historic heart of the tin mining area and he has become a prolific writer with 20 books to his credit, (many of which are available from Amazon and other online retailers.) Les has been published in magazines around the world and he is the founder editor of Poetry Cornwall which started in 2002.  In recent times his first play, The Last Cornishman, was performed and he appeared on ITV's That Sunday Night Show.

A Poem by Paul Tristram

The Punch And Judy Man

They found him hanging
TODAY!
In the small beach hut
where he kept his equipment.
He was wearing
an Edwardian waistcoat,
a Highwayman’s cloak
with his face painted
into that of a sad clown.
There was an empty
litre bottle of vodka,
a handful of barbiturates
and thirteen shillings found
below his dangling feet.
His dolls were propped up
upon a trunk
looking up at Master.
In his breast pocket
was a one worded
suicide note
which simply said
“Goodbye!”

Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories and sketches published in many publications around the world, he yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight, this too may pass, yet.
 

A Poem by J.K. Durick

In My Spare Time

I have done it all – painted masterpieces in my head, from Hudson Valley School, with my mountain tops blurring to mystery, to abstract impressions, with my colorful moods splashed here and there. I have hummed rhapsodies and symphonies of my own composing, waltzes and minuets, grand things I hum very softly, become performer and audience at once. I have imagined great novels, novels filled with everything human, our plot-structured lives, with love and sex and death and all those things that rise or descend to be parts of people. I have written immortal poems in the air, traced words worth saying, lined up metaphors, personified truth and walked her down invisible pages, felt the magic of the well realized line, the lilt of rhyme. I have appeared on stages set in motion in my dreams, starred in well-made plays I made that well, in tragedies so painful that I even heard tears of relief at curtain time, in comedies that I saw myself in and learned the humor of my ways, and all alone I laughed out loud. I dance beautifully at certain times, when I’m alone and my muse strikes the right chord, interpretive dance, I’ve been a bird, a butterfly, a bamboo forest, rain falling softly, falling in torrents, I have felt the heat and dryness as I moved, held my partner just so, held the moment just so, never knowing where the dance left off and I began. I have sung my heart out in the shower, hit notes only shampoo can bring out in me, became the music and words of the songs I would sing in public if only, if only, if only, and then it all goes down the drain, leaves nothing worth mentioning, not even an echo. I have done it all, but it adds up to only this.  

 

 

 

J. K. Durick is a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Write Room, Poetry Super Highway , Mad Swirl, and Clutching at Straws.

A Poem by Sarah Thursday

Viscosity  

 

Viscosity is the

resistance of fluid to

eventual deformation by

 

shear or tensile stress.

Viscosity is due to

friction of opposing

 

parcels of fluid at

varied velocities.

Pressure is needed to

 

overcome the friction between

the layers and keep the

fluid moving.

 

Viscosity depends on

the size, shape, and

attraction between

 

particles. For example,

honey has a higher

viscosity than water.

 

A fluid with no

resistance to stress is

known as ideal or

 

inviscid fluid. This

explains so much about

my life. Am I honey or

 

am I inviscid?

 

 

 

Sarah Thursday was mostly raised in Long Beach, California.  She teaches 4th and 5th grade, is obsessed with music, and has only recently dove into poetry again. She has forthcoming or has been published in Stylus Magazine, The Long Beach Union (CSULB), The Atticus Review, Eunoia Review, East Jasmine Review, Yonic South, poeticdiversity, and a project called Please Judge: Short Stories Based on the Songs of Roky Erickson. She has also made five chapbooks over the years. Recently, she has become the editor of Cadence Collective: Long Beach Poets, almost by accident, but completely on purpose.

Three Poems by Felino A. Soriano

from Of isolated limning

 

 

 

on (a) reacting to her

 

                                                —for my daughter

 

I met you amid a photograph’s earlier presentation                profile

 

contouring into explanation of your face’s familiarity

 

                        the hybrid of grays engaged hanker to

view prophecy of the finished becoming (ulterior)

 

            perhaps the oval frame of the months’ teaching (waiting)s

 

would interact with the artistic dimension of language’s valued

personal excitation…

 

 

on studying

 

we find sense—the mathematics

“work” wandering into the self in

fitting, numerical order

 

I or, worthy of the I of a puzzling

rawness, searches within the philosophy

of interpretive devices and the language

momentum speaks toward

 

reaching or needing a spatial integrity

loses translation once the hand of a

damaging tongue

reorganizes

 

meaning into linguistic misrepresentations

 

 

reality or the supplication of touch

 

prosaic prayer un

            fold

s

                                    holding                          in the help-partition of the mind’s

 

incessant carrying and

the noted persuasion of yen, altered by text of a moment’s

realized alteration

                  if/when or simplified if

 

music etches into worded hands’ dimensional warmth                  crawl-through

eventual widowed window this

alone parallel of exacerbated

hanker

 

 

 

Felino A. Soriano’s recent poetry collections include Of these voices (whitesky ebooks, 2013) Pathos|particular invocation (Fowlpox Press, 2013), Extolment in the praising exhalation of jazz (Kind of a Hurricane Press, 2013), and the collaborative volume with poet, Heller Levinson and visual artist, Linda Lynch, Hinge Trio (La Alameda Press, 2012).  He publishes the online endeavors Counterexample Poetics and Differentia Press. His work finds foundation in philosophical studies and connection to various idioms of jazz music. 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.  For further information, please visit www.felinoasoriano.info.