Three Poems by henry 7. reneau, jr.

pixie dust, in progress

for Ashley "Ash" Hunter

                    every big thing
has small beginnings
My Little Pony
becomes Secretariat
every phoenix
risen from crematoria ash
micro-chipped
off the old block
                   in every part of
every living thing/
is stuff that once was rock
is the Starbucks mermaid
              with bifurcated tail
the unexpected gift
at an unexpected time
like homemade dynamite,
or gansta, gangsta
wit' extra clips
               in her Hello Kitty
backpack--
mini-me
as Mighty Mouse,
the gimme cap
turned back--
Tinkerbell
10 feet tall & bulletproof
                 as hundred proof
as lightening in a bottle


Note:  quoted italicized fragment by Lorine Niedecker



Emiliya

Beauty resides, always, in the eye of the beholder.  "Amelia" penned "Emiliya"
by immmigrants who couldn't spell.

This or that expression of beauty solely obliged to the outside gaze:  Some scrap
of symmetry gets noticed, here & here, & there.  A splash of mystique inside a 
mischievous smile, leaping boundless from the window of her soul.

The lady had many secrets, & da Vinci just painted one of them.

The Stevie Wonder calliope of harmonica glee
that escorts Venus on a half-shell onto shore--all wonder wonderful & awe.

Like beauty is defined:  moonlight on ascent of angels,
as priceless that surrounds the heart,
a silvery beguilement
of diaphanous moonbeams wax &
wane a feminine
lunar gravity of magnetic attraction
that compels emotion, & the waves, to rise enthralled.



vente quad mocha/whole milk/whipped cream & a caramel drizzle

a surface sweetness
excito-toxin
that is everything sexual except sex
the family-friendly logo
a big bold spicy shout-out
Farrah Fawcett billow of hair
that covers
her once bare breasts
the mermaid of Starbucks
her bifurcated tail
the splayed legs of celebri-ho
an empty cup
waiting to be filled
as if ambushed by
come-hither euphoria
too seductive
to deny

henry 7. reneau, jr. writes words in fire to wake the world ablaze:  free verse illuminated by courage that empathizes with all the awful moments, launching a freight train warning that blazes from the heart, like a chambered bullet exploding inadvertently.

A Poem by John W. Sexton

What We Grow Out of Grows Into Us

My favourite jumper was a bright lemon
sleeveless hand-knitted sweater
given to me at the age of four.
(I was four, the sweater was newly-born).

This miraculous garment, more miraculous
than a Miraculous Medal, was teased into existence,
(between two knitting needles made of baleen),
by my baby-sitter Nanny Tyler.

As well as presenting me with this sweater,
Nanny Tyler also gave me a ship in a bottle
which had been made by her son who was a sailor
in the Merchant Marine.

Sadly, the ship in the bottle struck a reef
after slipping from its moorings on top of the television
and sank into a thousand pieces.
(My father must have counted them
for that's what he said had happened.)

The bright lemon sleeveless hand-knitted sweater
remained upon my body for I refused to remove it,
even when taking a bath.
As I grew, the sweater began to penetrate my skin
until it was totally submerged.

It still resides inside me,
now part of the plasticity of my adult frame
and molecularly fused with my body fat.
It was last detected by an ultra-sound scan in 2007.

Amen for my bright lemon
sleeveless hand-knitted sweater.
Amen.  Amen.  Amen.



John W. Sexton lives in the Republic of Ireland and is the author of five poetry collections, the most recent being The Offspring of the Moon (Salmon Poetry, 2013).  He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and his poem "The Green Owl" won the Listowel Poetry Prize 2007.  Also in 2007, he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.  His haiku have previously appeared in Acorn, Ginyu, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Simply Haiku, The Heron's Nest, The 58th Basho Festival Haiku Anthology, bottle rockets, Roadrunner, Chrysanthemum, Moonset, Haiku Scotland, Albatross, paper wasp and World Haiku Review.

Two Poems by Joseph Victor Milford

Noose and Neck, Plummet and Lion, Circus of If

If you are the girl falling and I am the lion then between us is the lying.
If you are the sonar then I am the radar and between us the submarine.
If you are the stamen then I am the pistil and the honey-bee is drunk on nectar.
If you are the hammer then I am the nail and we have an unreliable contractor.
If you are oxygen I am carbon dioxide there are leaves there and we hedge.
If you are shade I am cave and we get lost in the forest spelunking.
If you are the storm then I am the ship and the crew is terribly unequipped.
If you are the parabola then I am the hyperbola and we are out of focus.
If you are the lead singer then I am the bass player and we fuck entire audiences.
If you are the oil I am the dinosaur it took thousands of years for us to drive sedans.
If you are the fish-hook I am the carp and we are lost about a lake in the dark.
If you are Mercury I am Venus and you have the orifice and I lost the penis.
If you laughed at the last line we have hope--in between us only faith & phone.
If you are coral then I am sponge and between us is the underwater kingdom.
If you are the black willow I am the eastern red cedar and between us are corporations.
If you are mountains then I might be erosion.  Too slow for you.
If you are fan-fiction then I am power-pop and between us is a legion of bad haircuts.
If you are poems you don't know any of them while I'm reciting.
If you are god and jesus and I am god and jesus then between us are our devils.
If they are like spiritual prosthesis:  indeed we don't need them in our catharsis of flesh.
If you are river I am canyon and between us is a soundtrack of falcons.
If you are a post-hole digger then I am a bulldozer and between us are 100 virgin acres.
If you are cast-iron fences I am barbed wire so where build the house?
If you are home I am horse and between us are shacks and nags.
If you are mine then I am yours and between us are the semantics.
If you are gun then I am bullet and between us is the ballistics test.
If you are reading then I am riff and between us is my discernment because
I could do this all night.  If you are language I am silence and between us is only music.
The kick of the drum, the cry in orgasm, the gasp from surprise, the words on the eyes.
The if's and their fenceposts made from salt-taffy slaked by the ocean.
If's melting into something, those times coagulating, salt sweating into evenings, thens.



Centaur in Suburbia

Minoans had never seen the likes of my brethren before
Roiling over the scant turf of their promontories.
The roar of galloping and a man's voice whooping
Must have struck fear into them, made them create
Monsters as explanation, an entire Centauromachy, and
others as well, the harpy, minotaur, typhoon, arocoix, satyr, chimera.
Pindar recorded accounts of such liminal beings born
of sun and raincloud, and Chiron, tutor of demigods,
ensured that fire stayed in the hands of man; however,
I am just astonished where my abdomen becomes a chest
Again, there, at my girth, and looking down to where manhood
Once announced itself, I see the shoulders of my equine
Body--locks of my curling hair around my face as I pace
Up the alley towards the bratwurst kiosk and a mounted
Officer nods his helmet at me.  He acknowledges nothing
Amiss--an ancient myth striding over steaming manholes.
Fetlock, pastern, coronet, cannon are now my locomotion,
no white fragile ankles of common man cracked during
a draw and quartering, yet no one seems to acknowledge
my stature, being at least half of a noble creature, as I clop
up to order my dog with grilled onions and peppers, finely
grained spicy mustard.  The vendor speaks of the weather,
smoking a cigar; is he referring to my pastoral nature?
I am in downtown Chicago, behind Wrigley Field--could I
graze on that famed pasture?  Tail whipping flies from my gaskins,
I saunter towards the bank--centaur or not, I am short on funds
And the old ways of arrows and kidnapping aren't fitting
For such an anthropomorphic wonder once honored with garlands.
I wait in line behind a station wagon full of young neighing
Colts and a pensive mare; they progress, and I trot to the tube
And pull my i.d. from my saddlebag, send the parcel through
The vacuum and request a withdrawal slip.  I've been here before--
I am now in Peachtree City at my Suntrust bank, and the blonde
Teller who always stares at me stares at me the same; however,
Today I am untamed!  I am centaur!  No matter.  "Thanks again
Mr. Milford and have a nice day.  Thanks for banking with us
here at Suntrust."  I get my cash and amble out into the parking lot
thinking of where to sun myself.  I am hungry again, and I consider
the Zaxby's drive thru window, but I have no drink caddy, no
way to dip the fingers into the sauce without things going askew.
And the dream is easy to interpret--no one notices my horsehood,
my man-equine meld of powerful shoulder, sinew, bone and intellect--
the perfect machine that is not allowed inside of any municipal building.
Pegasi have the same problem.  So does the manticore.  How could
a machine of half-man and half-horse ever feel sorry for himself?
No.  The dream is about the death of myth--the myths I made,
running across tundra and steppes away from gods, animals, women
and men alike where neither my animal nor human nature could unite.
Thoroughbred noble savage, mosey towards the cul de sac and wait
Until a subdivision family lets you in, corrals you in an Elysium field
Beside the swimming pool and patio grill, the lawn chairs and sprinklers.
As your graying mane shortens and the horse-like features cease
To linger, you become the new centaur, covered in sunblock,
Woven hat, soccer tee wearing old man on the riding lawn mower.

Joseph Victor Milford is a Professor of English and a Georgia writer who is currently working on his EdD doctoral studies.  He was born in Alabama in 1972, and he went on to receive his Bachelors degree from the University of West Georgia, in English and Philosophy, and then his MFA in Poetry from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.  His first collection of poems, Cracked Altimeter, was published by BlazeVox Press in 2010, and he is presently composing a collection of poems with Hydeout Press, forthcoming in 2015.  He is also the host of The Joe Milford Poetry SHow, where he has compiled an archive of over 300 interviews and readings with American and Canadian poets.  He is also a member of the Southern Collective Experience.

Two Poems by Cassandra Dallett

In a Video Today Two Small Deer Ran Across the Golden Gate Bridge Behind Them an Idling Line of Migratory Animals in Plexi-Glass Boxes

when I was growing up we saw deer dart across country roads
big brown eyes stealthy on pavement
sometimes they didn't make it splattered windshield glass
leaving meat inside the grill
the whole car often crushed in around the body
and there was trouble to get into if it wasn't hunting season
so you quickly stuffed him in your trunk so as not to waste them
washed the blood from your hood
butchered him in your kitchen
tables running red
head staring sad eyes off the countertop
hooves and soft hide a savage decoration

in season it was free reign and the hunters came by truck load
dressed in their orange day glow vests their camouflage pants
little pouches of hot rocks to warm bottoms and cases and cases of beer
it is somewhat terrifying to wake up to armed men in your yard
their hunger not for the venison, too gamey for suburban taste buds
but for the kill the outsmarting of the spry animal
the satisfaction of tying him to the front of their car
prone legs splayed helpless
I always felt compelled to cover them
close eyes untie roped legs
lay him buck or her doe down with dignity
something those drunk and murderous bastards never had.



Start Here. . . 

He says
I don't deserve you
I say
Then start
He says
You're my goal
I say
You better build up
your drummer's callous
'cause I'm hard to beat.
The skin of my right index
finger will grow hard
with the story of us
pressed into paper.



Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA.  Cassandra writes of a counter culture childhood in Vermont and her ongoing adolescence in the San Francisco Bay Area.  A reluctant poet she believed poetry better left to the hippies and beats of her parent's generation.  While taking classes at Berkeley Community College she stumbled, or rather dragged her feet, into poetry.  When her father died in late 2006, wanting to keep his stories alive she wrote her first poem, Talk Story, a poem about a father who never shut up.  It won Poem of the Month at The Beat Museum of San Francisco.  Cassandra reads out often and in addition to several chapbooks, she has been published online and in print magazines such as Slip Stream, Sparkle and Blink, The Bicycle Review, Chiron Review, River Babble, and Up the River.  A full-length book of poetry, Wet Recklessness, was released from Manic D Press, May 2014.

Three Poems by Richard Fein

Throwing Mother Out of the Car

The hypnotic mileposts muttered your getting sleepy, daydream sleepy.
I kept fidgeting and finally started banging the radio.
My reception had been poor since leaving home.
Then at 60 miles per, the dot ahead burst into a hitchhiker.
She was a tattooed highway princess
pasties for a blouse, a thong for pants
with a 69 porned all over her right arm.
Naturally, I stopped.
"Oh if only I could have gone full throttle with her!"
But I had for a moment forgot about mother always in the backseat.
She had been screaming in the back of my mind for decades
then and now.
"Never open the door to strangers, never! never!"
Nevertheless, I touched the handle and the door almost opened.
"Never open the door to strangers, never! never!"
Thus shrieked my daydream destroying mom.
My foot obediently pressed the pedal,
and wet dream lady quickly shrunk back into a dot,
every time I veer onto a road's soft shoulder.
With mom in back there can be no rest stop on a soft shoulder
as I pass all these mileposts,
almost but never quite throwing mother out of the car.



Counting Passing Blue Cars

He claimed it was his greatest poem.
He said he wrote it twenty years ago
and never again wrote its equal.
While he recited his once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece,
I counted blue cars passing by the cafe window.
I counted five.
I've never written a greatest poem or even a great one,
and never will.
I just keep writing the same poem over and over,
a hundred different ways.
How many ways in total, really?
Don't know, I lost actual count years ago,
far more than five though.
But he already wrote his greatest poem.
Poor soul what a disaster for him.
As for my greatest poem destined to be forever unequaled,
I must avoid it at all costs
for thereafter I'll be left with sipping stale coffee turned cold,
and staring out a cafe window counting passing blue cars.



Stranded on Optimist Freeways

Rancho Grande Estates, lower middle class dream.
But in a Nevada desert?  Who could sell such shacks?  And how?
Don't-worry-rest-assured TV pitchment pointing to glossy, slick photos
of factories, picket fence houses, shops, schools, facsimiles of decent paychecks--
and most of all by unabashedly vowing that all who signed on the dotted line
will never again be month-behind-the-rent tenants of landlords lording it all over them.
You, they were talking to you, and you.
Supposed big investors were backing your dreams with their millions.
But your dollars were also needed, your dollars and yours, and the dollars of all
who sit on threadbare couches watching those ads on already outdated TVs.
And roads were promised of course, asphalt ribbons binding together the like minded,
that were to exuberantly branch off the main road called Optimist Freeway.
That's what the promoters proudly named it, proclaiming--
America on the upswing, a rosy road to a two bedroom richer living--
before those pickpockets of trust were handcuffed and driven away in police vans,
claiming, of course, to be innocents being railroaded to jail.
Yet Optimist Freeways do exist--on ever map of the world,
well-paved tenth-of-a-mile tempting starts,
with convincing road signs pointing "this way to blue collar El Dorado,"
and then turning into bumpy gravel roads petering out into an anywhere Nevada desert,
where hopeful pilgrims both brash and wary are stranded in the sand,
at dead ends of bone-dry tumbleweeds, bristling cacti, and desiccated desecrated dreams.

Richard Fein was a finalist in The 2004 New York Center for Book Arts Chapbook Competition.  A Chapbook of his poems was published by Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin, Madison.  He has been published in many web and print journals such as Cordite, Cortland Review, Kind of a Hurricane Press, Reed, Southern Review, Roanoke Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Mississippi Review, Paris/atlantic, Canadian Dimension, Black Swan Review, Exquisite Corpse, Foliate Oak, Morpo Review, Ken*Again, Oregon East, Southern Humanities Review, Morpo, Skyline, Touchstone, Windsor Review, Maverick, Parnassus Literary Review, Small Pond, Kansas Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, Exquisite Corpse, Terrain, Aroostook Review, Compass Rose, Whiskey Island Review, Bad Penny Review, Constellations, The Kentucky Review, and many others.

A Poem by ayaz daryl nielsen

The Long Strokes of Oars Beating

In the ethnological section, threaded
within all weeping and laughter since
our world began are rivers made for
those who row in fog, in fog and mud,
rowing almost without noticing the
supreme repose cloaked in this
journey of life, the supreme embrace
of eternal emptiness all stars of light
travel through on their way home.




ayaz daryl nielsen, husband, father, veteran, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs), hospice nurse, editor of bear creek haiku (25+ years/120+ issues), homes include Lilliput Review, Jellyfish Whispers, Writing the Whirlwind, Shamrock, and bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com (translates as joie de vivre).

Three Poems by A.J. Huffman

from Ripples this Reflection

My wrist flicks.  Stone            skips                three

times before  

          sinking,

disappearing into black oblivion of water’s registry.

I make a mental note of its passing, its lack of need

for pretentious ceremony.  I wait a moment longer to see

if wind or wing will rise to offer eulogy,

but the world has chosen this moment

to hold its breath.  The eloquence of silence

stands as tombstone, resonating louder than lightning,

an audience rising in applause.

My Brain is Dead

and I am suffocating

on the smell of sympathy

lilies.  White as ghosts,

they stand in defiance to my own

breath, as if the rest of me has suddenly become

a coffin carrying the corpses of thought

into a purgatory of mindless motion,

an afterlife of light bulbs burnt out.

Toes in the Wind

Baby girl waits for greyhounds to emerge,

feet swinging over railing as she holds on

to supportive hands holding her.  She giggles

excitedly as the eight graceful gallopers are paraded

before the crowd, waves her arms in support

of her fast and furious friends.  She knows

nothing of protests or controversy of animals

raised to race as sport.  Her eight-month-old eyes

only see freedom found by four paws pacing four more,

running, streamline away from the sun.

A.J. Huffman has published nine solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses.  She also has two new full-length poetry collections forthcoming: Another Blood Jet (Eldritch Press) and A Few Bullets Short of Home (mgv2>publishing).  She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her poetry, fiction, haiku and photography have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, and Kritya.  She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.  www.kindofahurricanepress.com 

Two Poems by Kushal Poddar

Am I Awake

During winter the shadows
awaken me.  I gasp, seek
the faithful glass holding fluid.
Outside some birds fly away
as if once they leave we'll have
a birdless world, inherit
numerous nests, cold, brittle.
Then I seek you and find you.
Why do I feel disheartened?
Do I want to stay alone
and crave for warmth, toil over
finding what I want and know,
I have right here?  I swing the shawl
around my shoulders and stand
not doing a thing, not
gathering my body and hauling
it back to sleep.



A Plumule On Water

Near the root, stem,
it remains stirred,
disheveled and
cockled from birth,
fringes wobbling
to directions
it will never
endeavor.  Near
the end the tuft
mocks and old sword
or a wick weakened
in wind and yet
holding the shape.
It twirls and falls
on the water.
Almost nothing
changes- the still
life of the things
wider than one life,
sad yolk of dusk
spreading away
into end of hues,
the obsessed eyes
looking these from
somewhere beyond,
a sudden faith
calling me to stroll
on the water
until I reach
the mid-river
and sink in belief.

A native of Kolkata, India, Kushal Poddar (1977-) writes poetry, scripts and prose and is published world wide.  He authored "All Our Fictional Dreams," published in several anthologies in the Continent and in America.  The forthcoming book is "A Place for Your Ghost Animals." Find more at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kushal-The-Poet/166552613396144

A Poem by Cristine A. Gruber

Landmark

The structure remains,
weathered and beaten,
cracked at the base,
chipped around the edges.

The tour guide is vigilant,
including all pertinent
information, how many
were murdered, where the

bodies were buried.
Most in the group
assume he's embellishing,
study his deadpan face,

try to find a wry smile
in the darkened eyes.  It
doesn't matter whether
he's exaggerating or not.

Stale sweat stains
the molten windows;
beams and boards
still smell of blood.

Cristine A. Gruber has had worked featured in numerous magazines, including:  North American Review, Writer's Digest, Writers' Journal, Ascent Aspirations, California Quarterly, Dead Snakes Online Journal, The Endicott Review, Garbanzo Literary Journal, The Homestead Review, Iodine Poetry Journal, Kind of a Hurricane Press:  Something's Brewing Anthology, Miller's Pond Poetry Magazine, The Penwood Review, Poem, Thema, The Tule Review, and Westward Quarterly.  Her first full-length collection of poetry, Lifeline, was released by Infinity Publishing and is available from Amazon.com

Three Poems by J.J. Campbell

plan accordingly

my spirit is
starting to wilt
under all this
pressure

and i know
damn well i'm
approaching
the cliff

a sane man
would gather
himself

take account of
the situation and
plan accordingly

the joy of not
being sane is i
get to actually
contemplate
jumping

i suppose time
will tell



a spree of some kind

i never trust anyone
who whistles a happy
tune in a graveyard

i never seek advice
from anyone who
hasn't been fucked
over at some point
in their lives

the clueless and the
perfect are absolutely
useless to this world

not saying someone
should go on a spree
of some kind

but i can't imagine
it would hurt things
as they currently are



the crazy life

another empty
bottle

yet another
morning
wondering
where you
left your keys

the crazy life

although i don't
think getting
drunk at your
parent's house
on scrabble night
counts as a night
that could be
dared to be
called epic

J.J. Campbell (1976-?) lives and writes on a farm in Ohio.  He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Dead Snakes, The Camel Saloon, Pink Litter, Jellyfish Whispers, and Fuck Art, Let's Dance. His most recent book, Sofisticated White Trash (Interior Noise Press) is available wherever you happen to buy books these days.  You can find him most days on his highly entertaining blog, evil delights (evildelights.blogspot.com)

A Poem by Michael Lee Johnson

Children in the Sky

There is a full moon,
distant in this sky tonight,

Gray planets planted
on an aging white, face.

Children, living and dead,
love the moon with small hearts.

Those in heaven already take gold thread,
drop the moon down for us all to see.

Those alive with us, look out their
bedroom windows tonight,
we smile, then prayers, then sleep.

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era:  now known as the Illinois poet, from Itasca, IL.  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), 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/promamanusa
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

Three Poems by Zach Fechter

Already Too Late

He is impatient
It is already too late

A red room
A man sits on a white rough chair
Eyes closed
In the red

Surreal
Purple silence
A woman stands and stares
Beyond your head
Silence

A jazz room under the city
Dark light and faint smoke
Warm and snug
Under the harsh cold cement

A deep singing down and low
A world class thrower
Is taken below in a struggle
And his arm is cut off

He stares into the distance
Later
Over a frozen lake
Into whipping winds

An old goddess stands in red
Vacant stare in front of a red wall
Smoke drifting from her lips
As she gazes beyond your eyes

She is trying to quit heroin
And it is so hard
So she holds tight to the carpet
And stares at the thermostat for hours

An old silver statue
Crying in the golden sunset
Arms at the ready
Staring into the crashing red sun

When she was pregnant
He would not leave her side
Slow motion cutting motion
Across his face as he looks deep into you

Everyone is falling in the rain
Back first into the mud holes
Everyone with their own
And their one



The Glow of the Night

Turning and again turning
Through the light
We break the pane
But the pain shines through

Surely life will be good then
When I have
When I am
When I see
When I breathe
When we are prey to God

And I see bodies falling from the trees
And I see trees falling from the skies
Who would drive it home tonight?
The pain surrounds me tonight

Oh men of the Earth
Oh women of the soil
I see clouds forming into a break
Through the sky
I've got . . .
What?

Naught but a tremble in my finger
And in a world full of people
There's always some meant to be sad
You may see a room in black and white
You may see a valley in blue and purple
So we just go to the tropics
And fall into the reggae and rum and cool wind

Sad though
I've never seen such a thing
So we must
Cut down the dead ones



Head Down

There is a festival
Where all the thin people
Sit with their heads to the ground
And the great sound washes over them
And they are happy
And their arms are draped over
Guitars and drums
And their arms are swathed
Over each other
And they are silent
And yet the sound comes
And their eyes flutter
And they cannot help but smile
From under their hair

Zach Fechter lives and writes in Wilton, Connecticut.  He has been published in Poetry Quarterly Magazine and Kind of a Hurricane Press.  He is a graduate of Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia.

Two Poems by Susan Dale

Courage

Sleepwalker at the edge of a cliff

To step back into an old familiar
I must lock up my restless heart
And vow I'll not develop the film
On my camera's restless recalls
Of breathless passions

Long weary of clocks
Tick-ticking backwards in time
And of yesterdays dry ghosts
Withering, crumbling

Weightless -- beating with wings for freedom
My soul with sail billowed
To ride turbulent tides of fear
Past security's shallow waters

And gamble everything
On tomorrow's turn of the wheel



Streams of Poems

From far off skies mellow with moonbeams
There was I swaddled on to a shooting star
And raced to a planet I felt throbbing with life

And burning in her race towards death
The star smoked into ash before she could tell me
That I was a moon child that once swam
In milky way streams foaming with the poems
I was carrying to earth

Lost, I wondered and wandered
Until a crescent moon gathered me up
In her pale shroud
She missed me her vagabond child
And sailed off with me across the night
And into the milky way streams
Of my bliss

The poems I dove into, I would swim with,
Splash amongst, and embrace
For all my days to come

Susan Dale's poems and fiction are on Kind of a Hurricane Press, Ken*Again, Penman Review, Inner Art Journal, Feathered Flounder, Garbanzo, and Linden Avenue.  In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan.  She has two published chapbooks on the internet:  Spaces Among Spaces by languageandculture.org and Bending the Spaces of Time by Barometric Pressures.

Three Poems from Joan Colby

Broke -- 2

Faultline where the crack was mended
Devalues the vase on Antique
Roadshow.  If only some careless
Ancestor or maybe you, yourself
Had not allowed that slip of hand;
Irremediable loss.  Then blame,
That holy glue suggests
A good-as-new deception.
You blink the barely visible
Damage.  White line where the scrutiny
Of an expert in breakage
Will not be denied.  Incurable
As heartache.  This heirloom.  This
Imperfection.  How the worth
Of anything involves condition.



Broke -- 5 -- Break Dancing

The body sheds
Discursive plaints, to embrace
Chaos.  The backward flip
Into the text of revolution.
Spin and twirl, out of sync
With measured steps.
The flailing limbs induce
Discord and joy,
Spell what the body can dispose:
Clause, comma, semi-colon.
The crooked delight
Of question mark,
Exclamation point.



Broke -- 11 -- Broken Pediment

The mahogany china cabinet,
Its burden of ruby goblets.
Gold scalloped dishes from a lost century,
An alphabet mug from which
Five generations of children
Gulped sweet milk.

Remembering how it stood
In her proper dining room
Before age broke her
Into a comma curled in a cot.

When we were asked to choose,
This is what we took.

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner.  Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature.  She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009,2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008,2010).  One of her poems is a winner of the 2014 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest.  She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois.  She has published 14 books including, Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press.  Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter from Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books), Bittersweet from Main Street Rag Press, and The Wingback Chair from FutureCycle Press.  Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

Three Poems by Ken L. Jones

Amid the Frigid

Midnight's spaceship wears a James Brown cloak
The stars above the valley below
Are so like an Enchantment Under The Sea dance
Even though I know they are "Signed Epstein's mother"
The bottomless seaside has a musicality to it
That clings to the menagerie of beach houses that dot its shores
While beautiful young teenage girls in saddle shoes
Climb on The Pikes' cherry pie rollercoaster
Seated by a carny who looks at them like the cat who got the cream
And I find that I remember them all
All of those memories now have become
Like some Stonehenge arrangement of rocks to me
Even as I punch the buttons of this childhood dream
So like moon glass brought back at such a price
That the interest in it should not have so quickly passed
In this new century where there is no Max Headroom or anything as cool as that



Ashes in a Hearth

As this day of pink petaled lingering summer vanishes
Peppermint street lights turn on like daydreams
As I revel in the crumbling of my diminishing memories
So like an old Ouija board with lettering peeling
And as I ferment in the melody of her voice
That is now but a tattered postcard in the used paperback of my last days on this planet
Where as I look at the stars and at last realize
Why birds have wings as they arc majestically over this cradle infested valley
All the angels I will ever need in this world or any other
And as I pick up my paint brush of misgivings waiting to sail to a far different beach
On an island of the rarest minerals where I will soar forever
Like all that is abandoned finally at last Mr. Natural and Dr. Strange at the same time
Once I leave forever behind this dreadful world of meat trucks
Rattling down to where the trains and stoplights are but late night ballads unto themselves
That can cut the pages out of your most reevaluated reasons
With hardly any effort and such sleath
That nobody but you will notice the difference in all their meanings
Or much of anything else



Shooting Clay Pigeons

I've needed you so bad ever since I was a baby
And now that topaz and silver Miles Davis
And country fried Mozart softly play
Till comes our theme song from half a century ago
That we first heard on an unbelievable beach back in the day
Just two rootless loners misspelled on life's message board
Who never stopped turning the cheese squirting pages
Not even long after Maya Angelou had become a phantom
Wandering in this blink and you'll miss me thing called reality
And if I get my wish my last meal will be
Understanding all that my sweetheart ever spoke softly of to me
Slathered with a supersized portion of the cameo like perfection of her face
So like some starfish caught in the net of all that I'd ever dreamed of
On this rugged coastline of gnarled olive trees




For the past thirty-five years Ken L. Jones has been a professionally published author who has done everything from writing Donald Duck Comic books to creating things for Freddy Krueger to say in some of his movies.  In the last six years he has concentrated on his lifelong ambition of becoming a published poet and he has published widely in all genres of that discipline in books, online, in chapbooks and in several solo collections of poetry.  

A Poem by Rose Lu

Childhood Friendship

     -- To Hongzhu, My Friend

To those without close affinity,
Parting means to be parted forever
You and me, having strong appeal to each other
Are fated to meet again to continue our friendship.

When we meet again after an interval of more than twenty years
I see you are still so pure, though suffering a little hair loss.
Others appraise your today
But I can tell what you were when you were a little girl

Who says you are already middle-aged?
That skip before my eyes are clearly
Your childhood smiling face and glow

There are shadows of your childhood
In every of your moves
I can make you return to the childhood you
Even without turning into a fairy to do it.

The brave you once took a pair of scissors
And cut my long braids short
With one stroke.
In those years
We led a sweet life
With empty purses
In those years
We were as charming as lily
Though we couldn't afford slip dresses.

We used to play under the same clover tree
That was a pure land that refused pollution
We used to sing in the same boat
On a holy water that didn't tolerate infringement.

The puerility we made
And the junior years we got through together
Typecast both your life and mine.
Your childhood is mine
And mine is yours

It's true
That mountains may change into seas
And seas may change into mulberry fields
But the unchangeable is childhood friendship,
It's the most beautiful broad accent
It's the origin of life
From there a cluster of white doves
Sets out on a flight toward future.

Rose Lu (Bing hua), originally named Lihua Lu, a popular and famous pure-hearted Chinese-American Poetess, is currently an accountant in Maryland, USA.  Advisor of China Poetry, column poetess of many Literature websites abroad.  She has authored the well-known anthology of poetry, This is Love, and Roses by the Stream, and co-authored Morning Dew and Drifting Petals.  Popular for her beautiful, fluent and pure style.  Each poem is also a statement about her life, that has made readers nod, smile, and shed a tear.  She's been named Rose in Poetry, Woman Sage of Love Lyrics, Angel of Poems, Queen of amatory poems, etc.  "The Heart of a Lotus" won the Gold award in the Love Story world-wide Chinese Poem contest in 2010; "It's Neither Frivolous Nor Drifty" and "A Fan" won the award in XXXI Wold Congress of Poets in 2011.

A Poem by ayaz daryl nielsen

Poems, escaping

Dodging my pencil and skipping from
the study, whispery gossamer chortles
seep into daytimes and night dreams
from somewhere just-so-slightly beyond
any possibility of remembrance.



ayaz daryl nielsen, husband, father, veteran, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs), hospice nurse, editor of bear creek haiku (25+ years/120+ issues), homes included Lilliput Review, Jellyfish Whispers, Writing the Whirlwind, Shamrock, and bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com (translates as joie de vivre).