A Stone Lizard

by Khurshid Alam

A stone lizard
darted its tongue
and caught a cave cricket
the cricket creaked, buzzed…
and the sound died in a few moments.
 
The lizard crept on the rough mountain
where hard trees and plants grew
and dry leaves lay strewn
the lizard cried shaking its head: I live in the mountain
in cave, among stones. I’m a stone.
I hide myself in the chrome
and eat the insects which I turn
into stone in my dark stony stomach.

Tell Lies

by Khurshid Alam

Tell lies
for it requires much faith in believing lies
and let them show how much they love you

Truth is well propagated in promises
in politics, in judiciary, in love.
Lovers die to uphold the promises
Politicians fight at the hustings to prove their words
Judiciary strives to uphold morality
Lies receive a cold welcome everywhere.

I’ve won many awards for truth
But I bargain life each time I tell lies.

Empty Chest

by Khurshid Alam

I want to cry at the pain
I can’t
My chest is empty
I feel the pain too battering.

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Sleep For An Entire Century

by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

I want to sleep
for an entire century
and wake up alive.
I want to sleep
for the rest of this year and
the year after that.
 
When it begins to
rain ants in my dreams, the ants
feel like hard water
and scorpion claws.
 
Newton’s apple
falls on my head and I fall
to my knees.  My heart
and head split open.

Traveler

by Luis Cuauhtemoch Berriozabal

I am a traveler of life.
I am not ready to become the dead.
This journey is a sprint.
The old dust is recycled through the ages.
 
The moon is like a rabbit.
It chases after me.  Immortality is a myth.
I want to slow time down.
My bones become more brittle every year.
 
I admire the green pines
rising toward the sky.  I sigh and I breathe
in the air.   I travel in my car
to the sea and take in the glory of the ocean.

Walking On The Clouds

by Luis Cuauhtemoch Berriozabal

I was walking on
the clouds in a sky
of green bottle and
brown bottle colors.
It was getting late.
It started to rain.
I felt drunk from all
the rain.  On the ground
there were archers with
long bows, shooting their
arrows.  They had good
aim.  The archers pierced
the clouds open wide.
The evening bled dark
colors down to earth.

Made From Stones

by Luis Cuauhtemoch Berriozabal

I was made from stones.
I started off as a little rock
and became a larger one.
 
I fell from a cliff
into the ocean and saw myself
dissolve and became sand.
 
In time I was made
part of a castle.  The tide came and
I was bulldozed over. 

In This Phase

by Luis Cuauhtemoch Berriozabal

I hardly socialize.
My time is often spent
indoors in solitude
and quiet contemplation.
 
I listen to music.
I let it speak to me.
My ears devour the
songs I like best.
 
I seldom go anywhere.
I prefer the hermit life.
It was not always like
this.  But I’m in this phase.

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Diaphanous  
 

by Charles C. Brooks III

A diaphanous skin covers nettles
to neon signs.
Its fingers
touch the nape of my neck.
Gravediggers must pray for
our longevity until first thaw.
I live here, sitting under its weight,
a weekend with nowhere to be.

porcelain trees

by Charles C. Brooks III

porcelain trees glow
frozen in a japanese landscape
morning or evening
it’s unmoving
deaf
a soft facade
 
the imperfections
of authenticity weren’t included
few can enjoy it
stars will not fall
birds do not call

View from My Office

by Charles C. Brooks III

Wild flowers stand
in crevices untouched.
Lawnmowers couldn’t slice 
through rock.
Some violet sprigs survived.
 
Root-cracked parking lots
prove how man is beaten.
Small towns don’t always
wear time well.
Everything green outgrows us.
 
One train every three days,
a cemetery sits across those old tracks.
Tombstones lean in shambles. 
Moss consumes them,
blanketing the misplaced.
 
Robins zip and bob.
Rich muscadine vines bear fruit.

Bach

by Charles C. Brooks III

Bach eases between chords repeated
to manipulate common sensibilities; the end result of royal doting. 
A hemisphere’s worship sits obsessed, owned, sold, and traded
a thousand fold to hold recordings
he penned to remain Orpheus.  
Beyond borders Bach traveled after death.   
He concocts an engrossing glory.

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South Station View

by Carand Burnet

A point hits when the barge's smoke syllables climb
Cross-sections of text through glass form abrupt
abstractions, the kind seen through
morning eyes
Station people, filling their history, rub into
wooden benches
The places still to be disturbed
The city anticipates things, presents itself-
flattening of platforms, eager
for light feet in heavy heels
As with silence it breathes
Luggage wheels sound off as heavy rain on roofs
other wheels like hornets 
swarm
Before I've seen a highway disrobe while somewhere
a cape or harbor endures
Now everywhere, empty buildings contain an empty thirst
People hold tapped bags, a churning escalator
Only here we attempt to interpret, grasp
A face's resemblance burns exact unlike
lighted brush
The world is a scatter of Wood Thrush—whose
calls suspend, yet lay in
vacant tunnels during night
Other days salons and showrooms encourage fate
On side streets a horse pulls a carriage, scuffs about
Underneath the subway veins, thick with rails, fill then dispose
I fix myself on increments as uncorrected
house insets do not shine
Cement cracks perspire weeds
Pigeons with heavy chests rise then fall for food
they face cardinal directions, each holds
its surface beside itself
Canyon wrens leave their nest with
internal latitudes
like someone else
for good
And how all of us, including I
will never
establish things
locate ourselves, always
giving into our
restless center
For a time, I forgot the ones under brickwork patterns
How the surface affects us, the many
buildings with
prevailing wind
However, the evening settles heavy onto skin
The sun wrinkles
into slow, concrete corners
One from nature, another from our constructions
With varied weights of color, it pulls objects further-
reduced
But will you recall what makes these ends? 

Thereafter, A Range

by Carand Burnet

The soft hide moon brushes against vastness, rears

its muzzle into

the dark

Beside streets

nondescript factories rinse in night

How I am haunted by objects-

A carved necklace, a camel, a ladder, 

all vaguely under and to

awake it persists

for it flickers along

jarring faces

Often it starts in the morning

a place, a district

past white letter headings and

building indents

For days, people spent themselves, forgot

things linger behind like a

     beginning ghost

Men hesitate, consider, decide

their understanding brief in humid air

And the objects, beside water run offs, 

narrows

people’s eyes in sunlight,

waits in tidal creeks where I am considered

alone

then leaves

Oil barrels beat in reaches, then ascend-

the rain hits soft doing the things it does

Afterwards, the wafting storm interrupts, 

swills its stick in 

city walkers

It gradients through thickness while

there is no need

Others signal outward- a glance, a sigh

While cleaning tables, I look out glass and 

the tree bend tells the wind's direction

For days

enveloping itself

At sundown the storm collects as an

oiled surface

Pools morning colors from the dark, concluding

the day is a range from night

May, this year

the station

A woman on the left

arranges herself, 

spares the ride home for another, one that can

brush things off

Until then she dresses for the

morning thicket, the new spices brought on

from machinery

The swallow-sparkler sounds ignite when 

a gem colored evening dies

I sit here on Monday for a while, indifferent

undermining 

my gathered stones

The yellowing flower folds up like

the newspaper I now

hold and add ten years

During spring subtleties burn hard

It associates with white cars,

    white birds

They skim down the irregular

embankments

If only to recollect,

gather the night and write it off

An innate rush, the flower’s

spine shivered

beneath its stem

And to think of the patina faces outside, wearing

        and thinning veneer

Therefore I close up anything I can find

interpreting matter

unbuttoning this matter

Wind chimes sound some unknown remark, but

yesterday I understood under any darkly range

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Chatchutchak  (Weekend Market of Bangkok)

by Robert Cullen

Pulling in to Chatchutchak,
preconceptions still debarking the cool cab
my viscerapedes scrambling far ahead
a thousand sense-points probing . . .
giant pots exceeding Ali Baba’s stacked
 
along sunlit extremities, entrances as portals
to a labyrinth effusing collective intrigue
as one steps boldly into a jungle, aisles pared
merchandise piled, hung, high overhead
into wood-beam canopies . . .
 
leather bags, purses, belts, what-nots, shoe-rack
balancing acts, garment stacks avalanche heaped,
spice waft, pepper drift from unseen kitchens,
bird screech monkey speech somewhere, over
a row, a path, border of diffusions . . .
 
zoo-cage odors colliding perimeters of invisible
incense-veils enveloping . . . all forms, sizes,
species, languid, pacing, coiled snakes,
brilliant plumages, pet permutations, feral sorts
warm-blooded, cold-blooded, green-blooded,
 
rattle-shadowed inequity, tree-of-life bark-peeled,
stripped of soil and sky and just as quickly
stumbled onto a brass menagerie of creatures
cast and polished, gong brisant, talons gripping
concrete slabs and crate slats . . .
 
entering critical dew points drenching dermal
surfaces, clothes bursting to brine in a viscous
interior deprived the Sun where sapien flows
crowd up banks of wares grid-check perfected,
squared, cornered, a cubicle of embroidered
 
geometries down from a hill-tribe triangle
of elephants, temple remnants and ancient vines
draping monsoon mists . . .
a spritzer of rain on the roof, a faint stir of air,
peppers and peanuts perhaps, a perimeter
 
opening, water bottles, deeper breath but cough
when passing the vat lady stirring her simmering
concoction of seed flame and mystery meats . . .
while just beyond, a court of trampled grasses,             
a table, a crew, fresh haul of t-shirts dumped,
 
American logos, football teams, bedlam,
nimble-limbed piranha, voracious, gaped gills
wages spilt, frenzied consumption then dispersed, 
chicken skewer from a burnt grill stripped
on the move, back upriver and splendid teaks
 
green-cut and carved, screens, tables, massive
chairs, tusk and girth and heart beating twiny  
veins of leaf blood, sap-salient outstretched
branches tangling eco-dance and fabric dyes,
a jangling of bamboos . . .
  

Of Metaphors and Broken Grounds

by Robert Cullen

Because his medicine bag, stitched with metaphor,
opens onto a boneyard, riverbeds beneath reed
 
and sand, a coral sea . . . for company shadows          
blue tinged, harsh winds howling through.         
 
Because hawk eyes are given to search the broken
grounds where serpents dwell, all belly, round,
 
inched along with seed pods and sloughed skins . . .
his dreams wander in and out of living things,
 
drifting moon-splashed blue twilights, thornbrush,
where with callused hands and still heart   
              
he builds cairns of shellrock for souls bereft,          
groping through this wilderness.    

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The Musician Considers Modernity And He Sighs

by Kristina Marie Darling

The city has turned into a mechanical city, he observes one morning, a tiny
ballerina spinning inside a glistening box.  Beyond the window, his wife
seems adrift under the trellis's dank foliage, her steps measured with a strange
precision.  And even the chain on his wristwatch rattles with diminutive 
elegy.   But when the moon rises that evening, every radio fades, and the 
streetcars vanish like wooden birds retreating into a great antique clock.  The
discotheque holds its breath in deference.  

(Previously appeard in Prick of the Spindle)

A Clear Direction

by Kristina Marie Darling

The cellist admitted to experiencing a sense of bewilderment in the presence of sheet 
music.  As the small black notes curve and twist, scurrying like beetles across a clean 
|white page, only the conductor's bobbing hand seems legible.  Yet he soon 
discovered that any concerto may be navigated with a compass, its slim metal hands
whirling under dim chandeliers.  On the night of his last performance, the song's
highest note became its northernmost when the scale ascended, a strange bird rising
in the dark blue hall.  The audience was startled by the intentionality of the music, its 
sudden attainment of a clear direction. 

(Previously appeared in The Foundling Review)

The Theory Wars

by Kristina Marie Darling

The baroque violinist stared at the ardently neoclassical violist. More and more, 
carnivorous glances were exchanged between players as the velvet curtains rose..  
Perhaps another of the theory wars is on hand, the conductor mused, tapping his 
black baton. Only the audience would know for certain. As the concerto began,
musicians grew fewer, and their sound greater, and the dim stage collapsed in a heap
of shattered harpsichords.

(Previously appeared in The Catalonian Review)

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In Great Detail

by Holly Day

they’re all there, the family

I used to have. The camera

scrolls over the faces of

my former brother-in-law, sister-in-law

mother-in-law, husband.

Nieces and nephews I never got to meet

a photo of a new baby in a silver picture frame.

I don’t want to be in that movie

because I’m in a much better one now

but I can’t help but feel I should still be

in the picture, somewhere, a big piece of the puzzle

one that never really fit.

Possession

by Holly Day

I wander through my parents’ house

cataloging items in my head

thinking, “This is mine. This is mine, too.”

saying, “Mom, you really

should get someone in here to help you clean.”

my mother won’t let a stranger

touch her things, she says, all the things

my father  bought her before he passed. my mother

doesn’t need any help

from me, she says. Everything is fine.

my sister calls me late at night

wonders how our mother’s doing, wants

to talk about assisted living, a nursing home

clearing out the house. she wants

the zebra lamps, she says, she wants

the enameled plates from Siam.

I tell her

they’re already gone.

Circle of Fifths

by Holly Day

nine thousand years ago, a man in China

walked across the banks of a river

blowing a flute. five permanent notes were drilled

into the flute, five more common notes

than there were representative pictographs in any common script

or letters in the few existing. chicken-scrawl alphabets. in a

reed-covered hut nearly five miles away

a neighbor this man would never meet

had a flute with the same exact five notes

drilled into it.

three thousand years later, Egyptians and Syrians

independently transcribed music as they invented

their dissimilar written languages, transcribed musical standards

with the same reverence as religious texts and beer recipes. 

five of the notes of the Syrian scale

and four from the Egyptian scale

matched exactly the Chinese Quing Shang scale

from millennia before.

two thousand years later, a Samoid named Pythagoras

matched pitches to lengths of string

broke a circle into triangles and closed the book

on music theory, saying

twelve pitches to match the twelve stops on a clock were more than enough

for any instrument. his scale had

five notes of the Quing Shang, five notes

from the Syrians, two more unfriendly wolf notes

for musicians to fight with and try to perfect.

The Poet

by Holly Day

my sister tells me a famous poet

has moved into the nursing home

that she recognized his name from a flyer

I had hanging in our bedroom when we were kids.

she says he’s a nice man, maybe

I’d like to stop by and meet him.

weeks later, she tells me he’s becoming a problem

he’s been fighting the nursing staff

he won’t take his pills

he cries all the time.  “If he’d just take his medication,

he’d be fine,” she says.

“How can someone so smart be so dumb?”

they’re going to have to take his computer privileges away

she says, because

he spends all his free time

visiting hard-core porn sites.

“It’s sort of sad,” she says

“I think he’s trying to write something.”

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prodigy

by Mark DeCarteret

what was I to make
of a childhood spent
mostly w/the empty
books they bestowed me
their covers (one w/fake
leather even) adorned
w/racecars & kittycats
flags & unicorns or the
“my poetry” embosse d
in flaked gold which when
opened often left me
w/my fingertips tarnished
& this blankest of looks

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Short Term Memory

by August Franza

She says she won’t read novels anymore,
Can’t recall a thing next day.
 
I say you’re not being existential–
Existence comes before Essence–
The thing of the moment,
Not tomorrow’s search for meaning.
 
The day you read, was there pleasure?
I can’t recall, she says.

An Empty Page For A Poem

by August Franza

Just love me til I die,
There is no other way to survive.

To flourish, you have to do more,
And that includes delicate petals of flowers.

My grandfather’s garden has carried me this far,
You take it the rest of the way.

Why Should I Complain?

by August Franza

If it’s going to rain, I’ll grow.
If a desert comes, I’ll be a camel.
If the world tumbles down, I’ll fly off.
If my mind shrinks, I’ll plumb my heart.
If there is no meaning, I’ll work the earth.
If I’m dying I’ll send out messages.
If this sounds odd, meet me somewhere.

.

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Giving On More

by Alex Gagne-Hawes

 “I don’t want to become
another letter you save
in a box,” she says
(it must be her
inside the telephone) she is
walking to class and
behind her someone
yells to a friend;
I tell her reassuring words
leaves yellow outside my car
and a deep festering thorn of wonder:
will she be a regret, an adventure,
a wife (can such a thought be mine);
finally I sit on apartment steps and watch sun
set through glass bricks as I tell her
I won’t be able to visit until November
if in November I’m able to come
but that I really want to see her
and I can’t wait until I get her letter.

New York December

by Alex Gagne-Hawes

only nine hundred miles
East the sun warmed earlier, still
autumn practically, golden grass
mud without mess, Snow came
when I left, a road of only snow
and other fools’ tracks
New York ice behind me
chasing not catching we broke
ice off my car in the parking lot
she cried goodbyes and I told her
not to worry (women often cry
when their lovers leave them)

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Agnomen

by David Kowalczyk

This word lives
in a graveyard where
the corpses constantly
chatter in Yiddish.
 
This word is
a small mountain
six inches high.
 
This word has
a store-bought haircut.
 
This word is
bursting with a light
that calls your name.

Banausic

by David Kowalczyk

This word has Stevie Wonder eyes
and smiles like Typhoid Mary.
It was born with a bullet hole
for a heart.

It slays dragons in its sleep,
but gets a nosebleed
whenever it talks
with a Republican.

It has lived in
Turkey Scratch, Arkansas
for the past thirty years.
It spends countless hours hunting
for reasons not to commit suicide.

Its face is a religion.

Cepacious

by David Kowalczyk

This word will pinch your nostrils.
It smiles like a cheap perfume.
It can frequently be found
day-dreaming about nuclear physics.
It has the face of a dying Republican.
It can dissect frogs with its eyes.
Its parents are Pierre Trudeau and Janis Joplin.
It bursts into tears while reading The New York Times.

Milksop

by David Kowalczyk

This word jerks about
like a startled chicken.
Its miniscule muscles
twitch and tremble
at any sudden noise.

It has the spine
of a spider, and
the voice of
a starving starling.

It always has
a dozen different headaches
going on at once.

It was born in Hell, Michigan.
Its mother is Cleopatra.
Its father is Calvin Coolidge.

Naff

by David Kowalczyk

This word was born in
Greasy Corner, Arkansas, the result
of a liason between Captain Ahab
and Madame Defarge.

It was raised by
elderly foster parents in
Epic Valley, Manitoba.

Its eyes are golden stones.
It has a xenophobic mustache
and a verdigris-colored, hourglass-shaped
birthmark on its left nostril.

In winter, it coughs and sputters
like an old man drowning in
his own phlegm.

This word reminds us
to tend our gardens.

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The Library

by Joseph Lewis

A woman pushes a shopping cart full of books
while old men frown over newspapers.

People in another room seem hypnotized
as they stare into the screens of computers.

Another vagrant walks by the shelves
after falling asleep at his table.

The magazines tell of travel or adventure,
somwhere none of us will ever go.

I'm wondering if I should read a novel.
Outside it begins to rain.

Noel

by Joseph Lewis

Thirty years ago I worked in a bookstore
then came home to my bare apartment
to read a book and drink red wine.
It was my calling though I didn't read bestsellers.
Christmas came and went and I made it to another birthday
in the depth of winter in my bachelor apartment
with a mattress on the floor like a 30-year-old student.

Now I'm an old man listening to Christmas songs
in another bare apartment as if the years
didn't really matter since they are a dream,
and my life is a dream to coin a phrase.
I must have been mean to read and drink red wine
instead of writing poetry like I was Li Po.
The Christmas bells are enough music for me.

Vocations

by Joseph Lewis

Somehow I doubt I was destined to be a poet
working in a toll booth in the middle of nowhere,

or actually somewhere in the middle of America,
not the actual middle like Iowa or Nebraska

but in the middle of a state in the South
as the tankers and vans go rumbling past,

and the red sports cars with pretty blondes,
they all smile at me as I take their change,

maybe they see I'm a poet instead of a toll clerk
sitting in the middle of nowhere as they drive away.

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Near Carporla

by Duane Locke

Less is known now of each other,
Less is known now of our selves.
Less is known of the little
We knew of our emotions.
As we touched by a lichened stone
In a poppy field near Carporla,
We knew now more about language of stones,
More about the confessions of poppies.
We knew about the sunlight’s weight
On a red petal that touched us, as we touched.

Moselle Valley

by Duane Locke

As we watched the Moselle river pale green flow,
Its waters tinted pale green
By the shore’s clusters of pale green grapes,
Our shoulders touched.
A wagtail bird wagged its tail
As it stepped towards us.
Concealed by the white-flowered vines
That covered the war-ruined, collapsed bridge.
A nightingale sung, first nightingale we had ever heard,
Song turned closeness into a closeness beyond closeness.

Not Far From Amsterdam

by Duane Locke

In Holland, in a rural section of bright green grass fields
Scattered with silver water puddles,
After we had left Amsterdam to drive toward
The billion swans of the Dike Road.
In Amsterdam, at the Moderne, we had observed
Chicken wire hung on museum wall and called “art,”
Drunk white wine, and overheard
Young Americans talk about acid, pot, popular celebrities
Of whom whose names we did not know,
And their dreams of owning Italian expensive automobiles.
We had left to find field sparkling with rain drops from recent rains
And at least fifty lapwings standing still by puddles.

Bologna

by Duane Locke

Now, she in a mobile light, shaped
And reshaped by an opening in a Bologna arcade,
As she stood on cracked, time-browned, tiles,
Became a stranger stranger.
We observed together the sackcloth steps
Leading up to the Cathedral unfinished façade,
And the cathedral became a wind-blown wheat field
Shadowed by the caws and flights of crows.
Her new strangeness brought us closer,
As I always a stranger everywhere became more strange.

Eden

by Duane Locke

The fruit we found came from
Absent trees.
It was suspended in the wind.
Suspended without a leaf or twig,
Without a grocery store,
Without a giving hand.
It was inexplicable in a world
That lived by lies.
We together bit the fruit,  our lips met,
Created an Eden that never before had existed.

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Math, Defender of the Faith

by James B. Nicola

It wasn't that
I thought
a lot
but thought
one thing—
a dot.

Because
that meant
there was
a dot—
I thought,
less innocent.

And then I got
to thinking
and the dot,
it got
to blinking:
and with the thought
I thought I knew
I was.

Not that
I thought
and was
as Descartes thought
things through,
ergo sum

but thought
a thing—
one dot:
which meant
there might be
two:

which meant
if there were me
there might be
another me, like you.

So were it true
that nothing was,
still, in the thinking
we could be

or,
more
accurately,
become—

which even
if Rene’s still winking
reassures me
some.

Do you see
a dot
too
and is your dot
blinking?
What
is that?
you’re thinking
that
you do?

Amazing such a thing
or thought
as a dot
so taught
so small
takes one from naught
to everything,
from scarcely aught
to all.

Crossing The Brooklyn Bridge

by James B. Nicola

The Brooklyn Bridge, strident as a
romantic, strong as the city itself,
clever in both design and daily use,
provides a coign of vantage from which I
can look down, to the turbulent solution;
look back at what just was, but half-transported;
or look ahead to possibilities:
and makes it suddenly as easy as
a Sunday stroll to get myself across.
Nothing else is beautiful like that.

the tamer

by James B. Nicola

Mercurio’s whip
crackles in use
turns limp when it is done
and deposed on the hook
where it belongs
where even now it is hung.

Between show and rehearsal
Mercurio’s
a different animal.
When there are no more lions though
what will he be?

Pen-obsessed
I likewise ask
the gates to be unpinned.
Heaven forbid
that the creatures
have been tamed.

Time Will Tell

by James B. Nicola

We learned to tell the time in second grade.
The teacher used a face that had no eyes,
Just hands. From time to time the pattern made
A face that I could almost recognize
As she took and spun its hands around the dial:
A frown, 20 till 4, or after 8.
10 after 10, or 10 till 2, a smile.
At 3, the bell, and time to celebrate.
Quarter till 3, or past 9?—With each arm
Held flat the hour was told clear as a bell,
But those two times, though no cause for alarm,
The mood was too inscrutable to tell.

The day she’d set and left the cardboard clock
At 9:15—the hour had come for Reading—
I couldn’t concentrate or hear her talk,
Unsettled that the clock face might be needing
Something from me to make it happier.

Real clocks, wound up or plugged, don’t freeze, now, do
They? Animals, while mute, will growl or purr
To say what they can’t say. However, you
Do not. Now there’s a nearness to your hand,
But does it say to take, or take this slow. . . ? —

I see that I may never understand
What time it is, and want so much to know.

Feathers

by James B. Nicola

Let’s watch the feathers as they float down river.
They make a white, low, soggy featherbed.
I used to wear them privately and never
tried to fly except that once. They’re spread-
ing nicely, aren’t they? Hope didn’t die,
you know. It would be easier if it would,
then I would stop believing we can fly.
Before it was plucked naked, though, we could.

But now it is an ugly, tawdry bird,
its coo a self-derisive laugh. Its shrill
song still chills to the bone the few who’ve heard
it, which I only hope you never will,
being a person I believed I knew
but didn’t, any more than I once flew.

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Visit to Grandma

by Iolanda Scripca

Have you ever woke up feeling like a kid
With angels dropping cotton candy on you soul
When knocks on doors reveal no steps in snow
And shooting stars have white beards and presents?
I get lost sometimes under goose feathers and it feels good,
Broken speakers squeak Christmas Carols 
There are no clocks on walls, only the rhythm of pine logs in the fireplace
It smells of the forest I used to fly with horses,
No saddle, no hats, no shoes, no wolves...
Just practicing tying my shoelaces and sitting up straight for life...
I watch her reflection secretly pray in a room made especially for us...
It's warm, pupils—two mirrors of colorful lights on a plastic tree...

Flower Shop Remodeled

by Iolanda Scripca

Invisible orchid on a broken, dark shelf
Cellophane of tears in a silent loud speaker shape
Rushed  steps looking for the right gift
Frustrated men not knowing how to show love

It's still alive, patterns of pinkish godly beauty
Veins of neglect succumb  to delusion
A lost bird panicked, skidding on a man made shinny floor,
spreads its wings colliding with the glassy desire for freedom

It's trash day, compactor spits out dreams of gardens
Back doors reveal  a weak  sunshine, oh, but it's too late
The janitor mops traces of unfulfilled  declaration of love
Store closes, new flowers kept in refrigerators for potential customers

Godly pinkish petals make friends with the full moon
Foggy, ghostly  bouquets of Angel Breath caress the Golden Gate
Dirt and muddy tire tracks struggle up the Reality Hill
An invisible bulb rolls down the Crookedest Street in the world...

Casino

by Iolanda Scripca

They—insomniacs—
play poker with their shadows
Loser gets sunshine.

Memories in Copper

by Iolanda Scripca

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Uncle Jamesie Recording December's Unbroken Law

by Tom Sheehan

                         
Two other bums
tripped over him on the tracks,
Boston outbound, in December,
under a Malden moon
fracturing itself

on ice, on rails becoming one,
on his last breath caught upright.
They dropped him on my mother's bed,
cut his ragged Mackinaw off, booted laces,
found him a worn dark suit

at the A.O.H.
They'd found two pages
of Blackstone in his pocket,
the failure who studied two pages a day
for the remnant of his life;

these even marked,
pencil frozen under key words,
stones set aside to be memorialized.
But his feet, freed of boots,
blackest of my young deaths.

I watched dread ice
slowly dismount his lashes,
saw soft tears of it go back into
his eyes, star-burst loosed from icicles,
wondered what last word he had read,

remembered. Know December now,
boots, laces, harsh cry of bedsprings,
how the significant mouth of this month
starts coming down midnight tracks
with slow howls, and dark justices,

robed in the cold crawl of it,
sitting, pointing.

New Poem Breathing

by Tom Sheehan

Curry a new poem
with a wire brush
 
toss vanity aside
when you dare to
 
hit it two or more swipes
with the same scrub brush
 
your mother kept the kitchen
clean with, drag with a fine tooth comb
 
the kind she sought out nits
with when school was overrun
 
the way ant hordes might come
yet, fire ants from Brazil’s interior
      
the Amazon bone-dry
old wells besieged
 
silence the final
architect

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widow's walk

by Adam Shlager

all wrong she says
the walls are not that shade of white
the ceilings are not high enough
the view is supposed to be
of fields and trees, not
city buildings, streets and noise

the windows are the wrong dimensions
there is too much light pouring in
and who is she that poses just so
in each room sun striking her
young innocent face and sweet mouth
smiling

you are not here either
sitting in one of the two chairs facing
the fireplace, which doesn’t have
the fire that should be blazing
even the coals are grey shadows
all wrong she says

gemini

by Adam Shlager

you sit on the deck i
built last summer in the
back yard rescued from
weeds and insistent bamboo

iris print dress stretched taut
across the long V of your legs
sunlight spills from your
full breast

it is winter and frost blooms
glaze your face
starlings swarm around your
eyes, magpies nest in your hair

our daughter is in your arms
holding on for dear life
swimming in the river pouring 
from your honeyed lips

it is a song of double stars 
and bears and other people
she does not know but
loves just like you

post mortem

by Adam Shlager

the space that is
not you
is a dark, empty sky
rent by a keen
crescent moon
reaping stars
that spill to earth
fill the dry lake
where I lie thirsting

the space that is
not you
is feeling the
knotted scar
at your breast
the twin
your mother
misplaced at birth

the space that is
not you
is a minute
or a year or ten
exploding into
malignancy
tasting of pincherries
and Alaska

the space that is
not you
is a sibilance stirring
rising from a
barn owl’s nest
coiling a  
silver thread
around my neck

bull in a china shop

by Adam Shlager

 1.
vitreous night shatters and
the burnt oil of my dream spills

you are here
and not here

I carefully pull
black splinters from your eyes

2.
the kestrel lines her nest
with Bukowski and Emily Post

I am here
and not here

her words impaled
when dawn comes reaping

3.
Uncle Remus kissed us goodnight
wrote our story on cork with coal

he was
never here

and we’re in the cemetery now
humping graves and leaving thank-you notes

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Unseen, Unheard

by Aristotle Sinclair

The violin’s rhythmic shrieks were compacted murmurs,
hiding beneath stomping heirloom of operatic
styles of the tenor’s widened articulation.
Vibrations varied, vocal oscillations rarely
heard unless the listener’s potential became
fabricated genius.
The violin’s tremor weakened, its echo
flowed a trickle-concept run toward
distance though its body remained,
darkened by lack of focal point consumption.

“No two people speak the same language.”
—Norris Benjamin.

by Aristotle Sinclair

the colliding, amid
the discerning through
silent disagreeing,
the baby’s crying strong
against its mother’s
calming hold.
Insurgent dialectic,
innate strands of
color wheel tones,
wearing the opposing
geometry of narcoleptic rest.
A pond’s absence
differs from its occupied
clarity known and worn
one year before.
A constant of commonalities
believes the lies constituting
truth, etching psalms of dislocated
hymns deep into the psyche of
disagreeing minds.

Soliloquy of Unobserved Occurrences

by Aristotle Sinclair

I watched the rain
undress an oak’s many waving arms.
Wind’s measured hands
stripped paint from the guarding
frame of fence’s fading name.
Weather controlled day’s spoken verbs,
collaborating with the furrowed vellum
of sky’s ostentatious gray.
I watched as shape overcame form
hanging onto the contours of my scrutinizing eyes.
I watched the rain
mend the thirst of a cat’s necessary want,
watched dichotomy awaken,
turn from each other like a duel’s
prelude to asymmetrical death.

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Painters’ Exhalations 561
—after Chen Shuxia’s Fashion Face

by Felino A. Soriano

Faces are alterations
    revised into novel hypothesis
inferring the area of age
alive in the simple fathom
father has decided to decease
following last of official breaths, distanced
through ascension
collocated with
wit and apparent gift for etching
monotone memories.

Faces
made to reveal relevance, skin’s
prior taut formations
now
    elasticized wrinkles, oh the good times
have jumped through
skyscraper’s least
attainable window.

Faces find new homes
resting
within symptoms of aging
melodies, more precise after
following frequent sounds gone
to find newness, and the smiles
are born again, born into worlds
clashing, clashing prior to opening
importance.

Painters’ Exhalations 562
—after Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (Taxi Cab)

by Felino A. Soriano

He
commits carrying onto top shelf
substance, transporting
needing-more-than-ambulation
towards enigmatic and open-mouthed
locations.  Silence
interrupts lips’ obsessive
union,
and he, driver of absolute
cliché
delves into eyes unneeded of oscillation,
sending passenger free time
involving separation from past and
subsequent locations
reliving the in between freedom
of childhood’s want and italicized
maturation.

Painters’ Exhalations 563
—after Marc Chagall’s Le coq dans le bouquet bleu

by Felino A. Soriano

Child unaware of
outside existence outside mother’s
contoured cradle.  Needn’t anymore
bottle’s calming cold
to finalize formation the
body no longer crawls.

Imagination runs.

Bodies exist of avalanching imagery.

Mother whispers

pretend, young one, your appeal is aggregated semblance
portending your eyes capture shapes priorly unseen, and
sounds incorporate sharper conveyance
outside the exterior womb
I have consciously created
to inhabit your ever growing
repetitious shadow.

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