The
Dead Are Without Friends
by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
The dead are
without friends.
They play in
the dust with
their own
bloodied corpses.
The dead
are without
souls. Their ghosts
who roam this
earth are like stones
who cannot speak.
Some try to
piece their limbs
together,
lost to a
war they did
not declare.
In hindsight
some would do
it again.
Others aren't
as gung ho,
so tired of death.
Say
What?
by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
What language
should
I speak
to them?
The voices
won't
make it
easy.
I don't know
what
they are
saying.
Should I speak
like
they speak?
Should I
bark like a
dog
just like
they do.
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
The
South China Sea
by Patrick Pomeroy
It was a hot balmy furnace of a day
We entered cleverly into the
South China Sea.
I was trapped against my will to the
Bamboo and rough bush.
The mountains lush and green.
A thousand years of knowledge could
Not have made me see…..
The ferocity and discipline of men drinking tea
Wearing all black…Eating rice and shrimp with lemongrass
Enough to last a week.
Curled in furls of sawgrass and bamboo they waited
For the larger soldiers dressed in green, who marched
In order and never noticed the men in black, silent and unseen.
The men of this distant land. Only wanting to hold their seed,
For their women. Once in season… fields of green
We were ten years in and still Washington could not see or grasp
The broken hearted efforts of the enlisted officer’s
Strength and countenance now a dry and throaty rasp
Oh dear Lord why did we do this….come so far to the
South China Sea, with our journalists and reporters and their
Sponsored spin..Yammering on about something in a thousand
Years we could never win.
Summer
of 1990
by Patrick Pomeroy
I
ate the shout that burst from your lungs.
We wanted the specs
that were lights of the
valley to chirp and blink all night.
The
desert is unleavened bread not from an oven.
Ovens
don’t produce the pumice that has rubbed
all
over our conversation regarding
what to do with our
tired,
hungry loins, long and feline compared to others.
The plague called small talk pervades the car drenched
valley for
which we spy on from Eddie Bauer
sleeping bags
soaked in the heat from an early morning desert nowhere.
The
wildflowers almost within reach somehow remind us
that we
were talking about it and not doing it.
An
Aging North Eastern Bluff On An Island In The Atlantic
by Patrick Pomeroy
She is wet fecundity with dirt, weeds, daisies, cattails and sawgrass
Her countenance a sensuous, dark Mediterranean mouth pouting, curled
Over the dried, cracked, clay hairline of a rocky, grey shale laden viscous
Cliff that gleams hungrily in the beaming summer sun
I digress….
To tell of kind bald men with no ease of consciences.
Who while deep in worry refer to her in loud voices
As Flora
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
The
Psychiatrist
by Rebecca Lu Kiernan
This angelic tenderness is too much.
Your office, too burgundy, too leather.
Your desk is too cherrywood.
You have gone overboard in decoration.
I am sick of your x-ray vision,
Your unnerving telepathy
And irresponsible precognition,
The way you try to medicate my ghosts away
Because they are such stiff competition.
Your hands and eyes are too soft.
Your mouth opens mine without warning.
You taste like butterscotch and Red Bull.
I rake my hand through your stylishly graying hair,
Your fingers, so deep inside me
Making circles, wide and wider
Preparing me for the thickness of you.
I straddle you,
One berry brown nipple in your mouth
And milk your one o'clock erection
With my Kegel muscles
Because the wingback chair
Creaks guiltily when we move.
As you climax, I stretch your mouth,
Forcing my whole breast inside
So your waiting patients cannot hear
The way you cry out when you come.
That's what you say my dream meant,
The two of us playing chess in the storm
After missing the train,
Never getting wet
Because we don't believe in rain.
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
Dog's
body
by Nicky Marsh
Call him in.
Double bed half-filled;
This smoothly-ironed, coffin-wide space,
This chill that pervades despite socks and spreads.
Envelop him.
Bare legs curled around soft fur,
Fast heartbeat pressed against slow pulse.
He turns.
Wet tongue on closed mouth.
Eyelids flicker and fuse; he breathes
The unguarded sleep of trust.
Pull him close.
Hands clasped tight around brittle ribcage,
He growls; a reminder
He is not
Nor ever can be
Man.
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
Melancholy
by Jeff Foster
With a baleful backward glance
She smiles a mouthful of weeds
And spreads her cello-like musings
Like a water stain
Afterlife
by Jeff Foster
Where is Karen Carpenter?
And Jane Kenyon?
Where is Benny Hill, the Stooges
And the Great One?
Where is Dean Martin
And Raymond Carver?
Theodore Roethke
And my own father?
What are the seasons now
Of May Sarton and Sylvia Plath?
Are the fronded souls
Of John Wayne and Laura Nyro
Now tempered by angels?
Do these fists of talent
Now decorate the devil's grandstand
As bunting?
These uncertainties left behind
Like arrowheads and pottery shards
Water
Stain
by Jeff Foster
I read your sibilance
Like Rorschach
Amiable spider
Atoning walls and ceilings
Like Christ's blood
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
the cairngod
by Radu Dima
meteors don't
welcome him home
when they freeze
in photographs.
at his
rainlike walk,
hearthfires still
into far sibilance:
pulsars vexed
from eden by
the endless silence
of absence
clamoring now
into the airs
of the all-lonely
living worlds,
but only heard by
fasting wolves
after winter has
tuned their ears
and hungers deeper,
far from flesh,
froze then broke
all other sounds,
so that they cluster
now under windows
to feed on the
distant wash
of your breath
in sleep, near
capes to search
for whalesong,
on hills to
scan the sky
for its vast
muted music.
powerlines arc
into stillness
when he walks
down highways
past parks with
leafleft trees, into
the cold quiet
we've built
far away from
some nameless
creature nuzzling
stones to life.
the idea of north
by Radu Dima
smiles trapped in negative,
whiter contours stamped
into a celluloid print
bleached hands defaced,
effaced in ink,
purged from memory.
these are our ghosts,
spun from the whitewash
tide of self,
crumpled into a dark,
shining of a slowness
reeled into being
by poles reversed:
these scars in our
skin are a map
to bring us back into
a west we've lost,
this greater nakedness
in which the air seems
masked is yet another map
that does not know of
north
through the woods
by Radu Dima
not green but you know
the leaves don't need
that for motion: windwoven
first as skeletons ungrafted,
pulled back from gold
to green not by paint or
illness. you always
keep a compass ready for
a certain north spilt
from the edges of all maps,
since you are sure that leaves,
at their loneliest sing
eachother out of death,
turn into the wind to ask
a question which makes them
leave the trees.
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
Shampooey!
by Scott Malby
Where California ends and Washington begins,
Cloudy Shampooey storms like a smoking cigar
Up an Oz land sea coast, casting visionary eyes
Fondling voluptuous intrigues of erupting space.
A tall tree adventurer and rogue, face cut
By opalescent rivers whose whiskey times roll
Over salty spin drift dunes groining their weight
Forward into an empire of green jade firs
Luminously holy and haunted by moss and fern.
Shampooey, flying on its own wings.
Land of drunken trappers, missionaries,
Indians, fisherman and gun toting whores.
Shampooey, at war with war, singing the Wayne
Morse sutra. Land of castor canadensis monogamous,
Flat tailed and teething on beach, birch and alder,
Rooting up willows, buds and roots in yellow throated
Meadowlark valleys of sweet flower nectars
Attracting scat of bear, otter, coyotes. Shampooey!
Independent, skeptical, wide eyed as a sunstone.
Oz West of coastlines where Tom McCall stares
Down from the stars to meet your eyes with his wink.
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
Short
Pieces
by Kelley Jean White
7 a.m.—I move
my chair to let sunlight fall
on the morning paper
70 degree March day—
but still that cold harsh light
at four o'clock
After all these years—
hurt, anger, betrayal, still
you intoxicate me!
after the closing—
the new owner finds my aunt's
lost locket in her room
already—
peach blossoms gone
lilacs fading
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
Depth Gauging
by Kimberly L. Becker
Between memory and forgetting
there is an uneasy confluence
as if two unruly rivers,
Mnemosyne and Lethe,
ran opposed yet shared the same and hidden delta,
alluvial deposit, sediment of years.
There is no ferry here.
No craft (save that of my own strength)
to convey me over these conflicting waters.
I swim alone at my own risk, subject to undermine of undertow.
But first I must assess the surface
from the safety of the bank.
Observe the roughened velvet of the water.
Gauge its depth,
its bracing danger.
The
Girl in Formaldehyde
by Kimberly L. Becker
Her flippered arm seemed natural, not deformed
next to her other, normal one.
She swam so well, excelling where I all but failed.
I never thought about her cells,
the way they had not developed or divided according to the normal rules.
Never thought what it must have been like for her at school.
I’d watch her over the top of my book as I cooked in the sun
before my evil stepmother would shoo me back into the water,
telling me to think of my father and Act like you’re having fun.
In college, dissecting a rat I had to fish from a vat of formaldehyde
I realized that all along I’d conflated that word with thalidomide
so that I’d always thought of her as the Girl in Formaldehyde.
And indeed she was preserved in my mind as part-mermaid.
Like Lycidas’ dolphins she was at home in water that I feared
and where I fancied I might drown. She ruled
the aquamarine chlorine of the pool,
whereas my regulation arms were used not to swim, but to grasp
my life-preserver, books. When she’d surface after a dive she’d gasp
for air then laugh and hoist herself, dripping silver, onto the pool’s
concrete edge.
She was assured in herself in ways I’d never be. Or so I allege.
Sixteen
by Kimberly L. Becker
That day we drove to the beach
And lay in the dunes—
Taste of salt on a stirring wind
Rattle of sea oats.
On the way back I slept
With my head in your lap.
It’s not you I miss
I hardly remember you.
What I miss
Is the unquestioning confidence
We’d get to where we were going
And the heedless assurance
We’d make our way back home.
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
Jumbo
Plastic Baby Face
by Corey Cook
is what the receipt reads,
the product: oversized
plastic gift bags. My wife,
Rachael, wraps, or bags
a baby gate, a bathtub
and clothes—prepares
to leave for her
friend’s baby shower
in Massachusetts. Before
bagging the clothes though
she holds each outfit up
for me to see, we smile
at each other, then walk hand
in hand to our bedroom.
Mud
Season
by Corey Cook
I walk on the side of the road
as Winter’s sludge chokes
the sidewalk. It is a sunny day,
each warm gust a shove. I am on
my way to visit my grandmother,
on my way as a light blue Toyota
station wagon slows. Stops. It is
the mother of a boy I baby-sit. "Corey,
how is your grandmother?" she asks.
"Well…" I begin. "Oh, she’s well. What
great news" she replies. "She’s dying"
I say as I look down at my grey shoes.
What I
Would Like to Say to My Uncle
by Corey Cook
"It took years of effort
to become the mess that you see..."
-John Fogerty
It didn't take years of effort bringing can
after can of Bud to your cracked
lips, slurring a greeting from your bed
on Christmas morning when we showed up
to swap presents, driving a tow truck
around a college town when you
could be a professor, not seeing your only
grandchild who lives in the same town. Stop
now or the undertaker will have to pry
a half finished beer can from your hand
while your family looks on with frozen smiles
through the glass of the frames
that have restrained them.
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
Even in
Bliss
by William C. Houze
I think even in bliss
about it all the time now—
the walks and cliffs
on the island we loved,
the dead crow we saw
a thing now of earth,
my motorcycle at rest
on its stand in darkness,
talk of boats and Europe
then of wills and deeds—
it is before and in now
looming the sun rises now
it is after and out now
cresting the moon sinks now—
speak of it soon or not
matters little at the end—
holding a cup of coffee
looking at your breasts
void upon void now
emptiness and letting go
even in bliss now
all the time now
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
Translating
a Lake
by Emma Leavey
You sent me a lake translated.
Slick colour
backed on professional paper.
A superb reproduction
with chemical clarity
and three-dimensionality.
It is clear.
There is silver on the water—
that sparkle captured in stillness forever.
It is clear.
The ground is hard beneath the sand.
No foot pockets,
no hollows left
by nestling bodies.
Frozen, immortalized
are unknown people,
half-naked and now, somehow,
half-familiar.
Isn't that
that pompous chap from back home,
mid-strut, in an ample pair of shorts?
Your translation,
I translated it.
With water and stain
I composed a hazy lake.
In some places muddy,
in others,
muted.
How could I capture a suspended sparkle?
Your perfect lake—
saturated to splodge and blur,
some vibrancy lost—
became primitive in my callow hand.
Matter to accurate image.
Image to watercolour smear.
And now
this third translation:
some disembodied words,
a reflection
of an interpretation
of an impression.
In
Alonei Abba
by Emma Leavey
I left my camera in Alonei Abba,
last summer,
on a bench by an empty children’s playground.
We sit and eat last night’s pasta from a plastic box
and talk about people
who you say
parade their aberrant ways
in the faces of
others.
In venerable German houses
they display art—
diffused, scattered—
around shady courtyards where arrogantly graceful boys play chess
and listen to the Doors, and older women, artists,
sit and pass comment and laze
and don’t care about national recognition.
Quiet.
And there are houses that no one lives in.
Scrolled in ivy and bougainvillea.
Guarded by father’s oaks.
Grandmother
Crone
by Emma Leavey
I look for you in my bleedingtime.
With your help I will
tear down
those plans we made, he and I.
We didn’t fail;
things changed as you,
Mrs No-Nurture,
know so well.
That black glass jar, with
bubbles trapped in
its hard skin,
holds nails and bolts and screws
and tiny fragments of dead fairies.
With you I will
sort through them.
I will put things in small boxes.
And throw away the rest.
Death Lady,
you’re with me in my bleeding,
will help me when
the day comes
that I forget to bleed.
I’ll throw away what I don’t need.
Let go,
prepare for spring.
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
Something
Different
by Aurora Antonovic
Today,
we get him to try
Something Different:
instead of the robin egg blue
button-down oxford
or dove grey silk with French cuffs
we clothe him
in plain white cotton
tapered, casual, comfortable (comforting?)
To celebrate,
I take the Manhattan cruise
the floating, dizzy feeling
as we glide down the lake
mimicking much
the way he must have felt
when cheap cotton first
touched his skin
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
Adding
"Blur" To A Snapshot
by Maurice Oliver
After we agree that theater could never imitate life we proceed to
draw-up a rough-draft that calls for a sweat-shop to pose as a rain
forest. In this scenario she can't decide whether to be the fur lining
inside an exiled Romanian princess or leafy chestnut trees wearing
thick mascara. I debate on whether I want to be a Parisian tailor with
a long tape-measure of seven-year itch or the return address on a
letter bomb. She thinks I should be the one to tell Rasputin to let up
the toilet seat and I'm convinced she should acknowledge that every
sixth-finger is a birthmark. Neither of us wants to be the DEA agent
with a big searchlight who forgets to ask the vampire for bribe money.
Still, stuff happens. A single thread could hold together the entire hem
of the world or peaches is the taste of the future. Either way, 1941 is
invited back to Paris where its been waiting for a repairman ever
since the transmission blew out.
12
Stanzas In A Taxi
by Maurice Oliver
In her opinion, a metaphor should be categorized
by size & amount of choices on the menu. By speed
& wind velocity. Whether they are punctual on habitually
tardy. If they've ever been arrested for driving under
the influence. Missed a child-support payment. Filed
for bankruptcy. She feels it should be noted if they have
ever had a bad case of heartburn. Wet in the bed as a
child. Can read music. Chinese characters. Morse code.
Has a preference for frog legs or snails. Can speak at
least 3 different languages. Likes panoramic views. And
perhaps more important, has dived into the deep blue
sea with its headlights still on.
A
Bobby Pin & An Electric Socket
by Maurice Oliver
Sometimes pleasure rises up like a brand-new sun. But more often,
things pan out in the abridged version. The search-boat never comes
close to spotting the pearl necklace. The stitches that hold together
our
lives unravel due to shoddy workmanship. Whatever was once in the
kitty has now been doled-out to an over-paid maid who only dusts the
mantle every second Friday. The peace plan is crumpled beyond any
reasonable recognition. The absurd attaches itself in the air like
Spanish moss while the marks a prisoner makes counts the days. Or,
a storm rocks the ship out of the beam of the lighthouse. Most only
listen to music that can move. And while all this is happening,
Dracula's
two pointed teeth write sentimental inscriptions on some sleeping neck.
"Skip
#73" Sonnet
by Maurice Oliver
I have my reasons. For instance, the ability
to iron creases out of a fan for one. To find
a chaos theory appealing for another. To be
a vehicle on the road to salvation. Untied
shoelaces. Overturned chairs. The buoy left
out in a frigid ocean. An obdurate spider. A
redeemed sheep. The quack of a ravenous
duck. "X" that does not mark the spot. Pastry
already stale. No shortage of hummingbirds.
Lead feathers. Tarred toast. Clouds that have
not yet learned how to clot. Defiant caterpillars.
Edible snails. The sun & moon oblivious to
indifference. No pet rocks. Beauty when it's
accidental. Fruit that purposely lacks seeds.
And of course, a steadfast belief in the notion
of "why".
Ignoring
The Super-Crazy-Ultra-Wide
by Maurice Oliver
OK. OK.
If I had my rathers I'd prefer a steamy attic
with a razor's edge view. The wooden beams
would have nothing left to say & the winter
isolation would be pilfered in the prettier way.
There would be no mirrors & the stylize fuzz
might be mistaken for dust bunnies. O yeah,
& the old trunk in the corner would become
extremely talkative after a few drinks but most
of all would be well-known for its slick handling
of a deck of cards.
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
V.
A. Case 45789AA
by Robert L. Harrison
Rusty never talked
not even a yep
or nod of the head.
But his eyes
were clear
and could see
through the bullshit
around him.
So yer never lied to Rusty.
even the docs
who examined him
that gave him six months
for his heavenly transfer
looked him straight
in the eye.
But a year later
Rusty's presence
still penetrated them,
making the medics
glance away when
he came around
as the rest of us
hi-fived him
in silence
Crossing
Over
by Robert L. Harrison
They slip onto ferries
and cross the choppy Hudson
leaving their dream streets
and blue chips behind.
Now, the Jersey shore
looms ahead,
a landscape waiting
for a landing.
A renter's paradise
where the yuppies go, where Hoboken days
turn into Weehawken nights.
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
Smoke
by Joseph Lewis
Orange smoke from the chimney
on a roof that's layered with snow
disappears into the pale blue sky
as fast as someone breathing.
When the wind shifts the snow
blows away from the branches
like white dust then glitters
in the air and flies away.
The same sun that makes the snow
seem as blue as the sky today
will turn the field outside my door
into rivulets of ashes and mud.
Clouds
by Joseph Lewis
The sun burns through a layer of cloud
to fill my room with light again.
Through the half-closed blinds the tops of pines
seem to be swaying in the wind,
but maybe it's the light that makes them move,
the same light that covers the ground
and spreads over the tops of trees
and on the roofs of automobiles
motionless in their spaces.
The light seems cold in a heated room,
not like the light on a summer morning
thick with the smell of flowers,
but as pale as the sky in winter
even when it seems to dissolve a cloud
that might have held a frozen rain
falling in a field waiting to be plowed again.
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
Dust
Devil
by Pete Lee
you hear it
before you
can tell
where it's
going
to appear
& they grow 'em
big out here so
you crouch down
both hands
holding your hat
on & it
doesn't last
more than
30 seconds
& then it's
as if
nothing
has occurred
except your
neighbor's
front porch
roof
is lying
upside-down
at your
feet
Soularoid
by Pete Lee
after a thousand
candid shots
your good side
still eludes me
The
Unrealist
by Pete Lee
puts all his money
in a cloud bank, but
it falls through.
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
Loops
by Howard Good
I had trouble learning
to tie my shoes,
so my mother took me
to a rabbi. I was five,
six. He demonstrated
on his own shoes first.
Sometimes I think
I dreamed the rabbi
with his long, scary beard.
My mother is dead now.
I still make two loops
and slip one through the other.
The
Roofers
by Howard Good
for Gabriel
It isn’t the meaning
of these words
that matters
just the sound
like the hammering
from next door
a couple of roofers
on their knees
and racing the light
because it may be true
what they heard
tomorrow rain
Litany
by Howard Good
Furtive glances and whispers,
bare, bereft trees,
unfaithful gods lolling about
a galaxy of tinfoil stars,
the dead from the newspaper
receding into white space
while strangers stare
at their inscrutable backs,
on my machine a voice
I don’t recognize announcing
a new age, though horses scream,
and it’s night, and the creek
overflows as with sudden tears.
Return to Poetry
Return to Top of
Page
hen they
wound their way up the hill through the pine trees and saw the house, Jack told
his wife that it reminded him of The Big Chill. The stately old house,
with porches running the entire length of both floors in front, had the look of
a southern mansion. The grounds were extensive. There was a small structure
called the tea house halfway down the hill, a small enclosure with a larger
corral for the cows, a chicken house and pen off to one side. The house itself,
though imposing at first glance, was not very large. There were only two
bedrooms.
was seventeen.
He was thirty, a poet who owned a very hip coffee house. He'd hired me to wait
tables, this was my second night, and now, at two a.m., after we'd locked up, he
said, "Alice, you're so tense, you've got to relax. Let me help you
baby."
ne doll with a
painted white face and a delicate purple fan that our father brought back from
Chinatown (Exxon station bathroom, just outside of Memphis)
imon enjoyed his own
company: he found it much more interesting than other people’s. He spent most
of his time either out at the cinema or in with his computer games. It wasn’t
that he was shy; he just didn’t care much for conversation. His sounded so
plodding compared with the ones he heard at the cinema. His voice was too
toneless, too English. So he spoke only when absolutely necessary.
boy in his mid
teens named John lives alone with his mother. His father is far away, has been
far away for a long time, and John does not expect to see him again. He is a
quiet boy, who has many hobbies, but often does things alone. One day, friends
from school rag on him for having a model plane collection and he shoots the
roof. Finally, storming off after yelling for five minutes, he calms down enough
to really hate them. That was exactly what they wanted. John does not know this,
though. He thinks they were just being mean and stupid, so he goes home and
decides to start a new hobby.