The

The End

2011-03-20T08:07:00.000-04:00

The return of The was short-lived. This project is now closed. Thank you for all of your wonderful words and support.

I am starting up a new project called Ten Pages Press. It can be found here:

Ten Pages Press

Please join me there. And submit your work.

Tassos by Andrew McCallum Crawford

2011-03-15T07:24:00.000-04:00

Είναι ένα παιδί που συχνάζει στο μαγαζί μου. Κάθε αρχές του μήνα έρχεται. Τον κουρεύω. Φαίνεται πολύ μικρός. Φαίνεται άρρωστος. Τόσο λεπτός, τόσο χλωμός. Μου λέει οτι είναι Σκωτσέζος. Ουίσκυ, ουίσκυ! μου λέει. Καταλαβαίνω. Είναι καθηγητής. Διδάσκει αγγλικά σ'ενα μέρος στην παραλία. Είναι ενα μεγάλο, παλαιό σχολείο που υπήρχε πριν από το μαγαζί μου - 1940, 50. Τελευταία φορά που ήρθε τον ξύρισα. Σε κερνάω, του λέω, δεν θα σε χρεώσω τίποτα. Κοιτάζει το ξυράφι στο τραπέζι, τα μάτια του μεγάλα σαν πιάτα. Γελάω. Μην ανησυχείς, λέω, και του δείχνω την κάρτα. President Johnson. Κάνω καλό ξύρισμα. Δεν θα σε κόψω. Γέρνει πίσω στην καρέκλα και απλώνω το σαπούνι στο προσωπό του. Προσπαθεί να μη τρέμει. Οι τρίχες είναι μαλακές. Κόβονται εύκολα. Δεν τον κόβω. Τον κοιτάζω στον καθρέφτη. Το δέρμα του τόσο απαλό, τόσο μαλακό. Τόσο άσπρο.

This boy, he come in my shop. The start of every month, he come in. I cut his hair. He look too young. He look ill. So thin, so pale. He tell me he is Scottish. Whisky, Whisky! he say. I understand. He is teacher. He teach English in a place on the seafront. It is a big school, an old school. It was here before my shop - 1940s, 50s. Last time he come in I shave him. I treat you, I say - no charge. He look at the razor on the table, his eyes big like plates. I laugh. No worry, I say, and show him the card. President Johnson. I do good shave, I tell him. I don't cut you. He lean back in the chair and I put the soap on his face. He try not to shake. The hairs are soft - they come off easy. I don't cut him. See, I say. I look him in the mirror. His skin so smooth, so soft. So white.

MIA by Brian Rosenberger

2011-03-09T12:24:00.000-05:00

Larry has not been to work for days.
Someone has bothered to turn his computer off.
His manila folders of important documents sit unopened.
The company phone blinks angrily, messages still waiting.
People arrive at his cubicle only to discover a ghost town.
I can see the anxiety on his manager’s face
when I see her between meetings.
Calls to his home and his cell phone have gone unanswered.
Rumor is the Police have been called to investigate.
Still no Larry.
I smile, a rare occurrence in Hell.

Three by John Sweet

2011-03-03T06:33:00.001-05:00

ambient prayer with head wreathed in flames

tells her it’s like cutting yrself to
let the poison run out of yr veins

tells her it’s like grey ice
in november sunlight

nothing that actually means anything
and so here we are again among
the weeds and the ruined kingdoms down by
the water’s edge and so here we are
again up on burnt hill road

blue sky and emptiness and
never enough gods to fill it

never enough hands to start a war and
so the soldier shoots the child instead

says orders are orders

smiles in surrenders like a
priest or a coward

smiles like flowers choked by weeds at
the edge of the desert and
it’s here with the furnace broke and
the windows boarded over,
it’s here in the neverending now,
fucking a stranger in
someone else’s room, in
someone else’s city, that one of you
calls the other by the wrong
name and no one cares

it’s later,
with the baby crying, with the
constellations inverted or
obscured, with clouds like
bruised silver, like dreams stained
with hopeless blood, and how
far away were you hoping to be
when all light finally faded?

how long did you think it would take
to reach a point in your life
where nothing mattered anymore?

the numbing weight of failure
always arrives
sooner than you’d expect

#

without hope, without desire

and then at 30
lost and falling and
then at 40

some pointless story
with an unhappy ending

some fucking poem
scribbled out quickly on the
back of a gas receipt

roomful of children just
waiting to be broken like
so many tiny gifts

nothing revealed, nothing
given away and it
seems like i had a wife
when this thought began

remember white space between us
and windows with shattered glass
and there is nothing so pure it
cannot be poisoned

there is nothing left to do in
the end but accept

#

with heartfuls of sand and of mud, with the river run dry

sick of myself at 4 in the afternoon

ice on the shadowed sides of
sleeping factories

weeds

no news from god since before
i was born
and then the death of his only son
played out for cheap entertainment

this is the world you inherit and
then it becomes
the one you pass on

these are the dreams you dream after
your lover is done with them

daughter was only 3 years old,
was filled with cancer
and the sunlight was a lie

the moment approached and
then it passed
and the fear is what remains

call whatever it is you feel
faith
and then see how far it takes you

Vague by Paul Harrison

2011-03-03T06:27:00.001-05:00

is not the word
but close enough
and vaguely disturbed
i am
vaguely lost
in the hum of the air-con
class war on tv
there in the corner
vaguely dehydrated too
but correcting that
and vague
could be the word
but it's not enough
vaguely uneasy
vague tremors in hand
leaning and swinging
into the past
or maybe tomorrow
like the vaguest
of feelings
you can't describe

Two by William Doreski

2011-03-02T06:28:00.000-05:00

Uncle Chet's Boiled Coffee

My Uncle Chet boiled coffee
for a week. The tar in the pot
tasted like a miracle--

not the one of loaves and fishes
but the one no gospel recounts
for fear of a libel suit.

The woolen but rainless sky
disappoints. The garden soil
cracks like Egyptian pottery.

Red squirrels squeak in the hemlocks,
taunting each other in language
ornate as the plaster ceilings

of mansions. I can't contain
this runaway afternoon--
visions of children on bicycles

run down by reckless drivers
scar the soft parts of my brain.
This hurts like an old-fashioned band

concert, the kind I once suffered
at Weirs Beach, where my parents
had dragged me in the full blush

of adolescence. The year before,
Count Basie's orchestra had won
my attention and respect,

and two years before, Duke Ellington
had battered his piano silly
right under my bluff little nose.

The lack of rain has saddened me
in shades of tepid gray and taupe,
but there's still a month of summer,

in theory, and the nights still ring
with coyote howls and barks.
Uncle Chet's been dead for many years,

but I can still taste his coffee—
which he learned to make on beachheads
in the Solomon islands, the guns

coughing and banging everywhere
and the tropical rain so sticky
he sometimes mistook it for blood.

#

Redwoods

Thirteen years since the murders.
The house slouches in the brush,
the windows punctured by rocks.
No one’s gone in, though. Thick dust

carpets the pine board floors.
Faint chalk outlines remember
the slump of bodies. Furniture
lies askew, just as struggle left it.

Spiders, black and pink bulges,
have webbed the corners of the rooms
and booby-trapped the doorways.
I enter swinging a stick

to dissipate both spiders and gloom.
The three people who died here
meant nothing to me alive,
but have troubled my dreams since death.

So I’ve flown to San Francisco,
rented a sporty white Saab,
and cruised up Highway One north
to discover how remote from me

and the world this fatal canyon is.
Redwoods loom over the crime scene
and filter the sunlight, allowing
only the bleak of the spectrum

to shine on this fragile house.
No one has looted, no one
has even browsed the spilled books—
beat classics, mostly, Burroughs

and Genet. Blood spatter has sunk
so deeply into the wallboard
not even fire can erase it.
But willing to try, I pour

the five gallons of gasoline
I think sufficient for the job,
step outside, ignite a newspaper
and toss it in. The eruption

howls more loudly in the mind
than in the world. A fine gray ash
fills me. Rain blows off the sea
to keep the fire from spreading.

I walk a mile back to my car,
confident that that any ghosts
that survive are only ghosts of me,
bored silly by staying alive.

Leave by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

2011-03-02T06:21:00.001-05:00

I want to leave my fear.
I want to leave in peace.
I want to leave my heartache.
I want to leave my dreams.
I want to be innocent like children.
I want to leave my shadow
walking aimlessly on the road.

Cloak the Question for Another Day by Donal Mahoney

2011-03-02T06:18:00.001-05:00

Riding home on the train he’s aware
that after supper,
cigarettes, TV and beer,
a romp on the wife will cloak
the question another day.
He’ll fear nothing, then,
till noon the next day when

it starts all over again.
If his luck holds, he’ll survive
the ride home on the train, aware
that after supper,
cigarettes, TV and beer,
a romp on the wife may cloak
the question another day.

Black Lace & Diamonds by Craig Sernotti

2011-02-28T19:18:00.003-05:00

Clouds are on fire
but so what.
I'll watch the world end
from my couch.
With the cat pawing
at the aquarium
& the dog asleep
at my feet.
You in the kitchen
in black lace & diamonds.
Do you hear that?
It's the sound of California
falling into the ocean,
me pulling off my pants

- originally appeared in Dogzplot; also published in my book Forked Tongue

Correcto Mundo by Catfish McDaris

2011-02-28T19:15:00.000-05:00

Creepy Uncle Willy was the last resort,
but my parents had to go to a funeral,
getting into my pajamas, I noticed girlie
books in the bathroom, I was soon
walking the monkey, Uncle Willy yelled

You naughty boy, now I'm going to spank
you, it will hurt me more than you, he
lowered my p.j.s & underwear & bent me
over his lap with trembling hands

I could feel him getting hard & I thought
he wants to stick that up my asshole, I
jumped down & grabbed the toilet lid back
& smacked him upside his head

Blood exploded from his nose & his eyeballs
rolled white like hard boiled eggs, the cops
came & called my folks, at Uncle Willly's
funeral everyone looked at me strange

Ma said, don't pay any attention, Pa said,
fuck them, the preacher asked if anyone
wanted to say a few words, I stood & said
he was right, it did hurt him more than me.

Prismatic Small Talk by David Lawrence

2011-02-28T16:18:00.001-05:00

I put a sheet over your friskiness to listen to the purr
Of your cat-o-nine tails.
You are as black
As the crossing of bad luck
But you are really white
Because I am not a believer in multi-cultural
Fodder.
I hate cats.
I love pussy.
No. I love the spirit with which pussy is invested,
The woman inside the glands.
The conversational
Glue.
If we talk enough about the fur that surrounds
Your rainbow,
I will take to task the color of your prismatic small talk.

Speeding Down Interstate 86 South by Jack Henry

2011-02-28T10:26:00.000-05:00

alone in a house
under skies
gray and unforgiving
surrounded by an empty desert
and a dead sea

there are no voices
here
no sounds that rise from a schoolyard covered in dead grass
there are no eyes
here
no witnesses arranged in a fashionable stance to bear truth upon those of us that remain
there are no screams
here
no cries of ecstasy or pain or confusion from tides unbearable on shores discontent

in the solace of night
a meth kitchen explodes
into life
and burns
unattended
no crowds gather to watch
and dance

in days like these
the ones we awake to without fresh skin
our feet touch
cold stone
hands reach out for a glass pipe and torch

and little else

(56) by Michael McAloran

2011-02-28T06:56:00.001-05:00

Cut close to salve…entwined…gnarl of fingerless trees/ until final…

Atrophic heart of pale shadow…breath of shale…ice/ dead/ following…

Erupt/ head-sprung/ some silence/ echo/ some step/ silence/ step again…

Flush of strained blood…axial/ dislodged/ ablaze…stone breath/ cry out…

Follow again/ through which…strain/ heart dead or alive/ unknown…

Scattered/ butchered/ salve of night’s purpose(less)…kicking teeth from dust...

Tiny Piece of Night by David McLean

2011-02-28T06:13:00.000-05:00

a tiny piece of night fell out of me
a child's broken toy

and rust was a slow ocean growing
skin shrinking back to the terrible touch

of memory and a frightened night
all the tiny pieces that were missing

all their listless allegations
and we were still alive

a tiny piece of night
a gigantic chunk of time

THE is back

2011-02-28T02:04:00.000-05:00

I'm reopening The. Please send submissions again.

Hiatus

2010-10-07T11:00:00.000-04:00

The and Blood on Paper are both on hiatus. Hope to return someday...

Every Day by Michael H. Brownstein

2010-08-06T08:21:00.000-04:00

There are times in your life—
I don’t know when—

Beauty is skin deep
and ugliness is not a full color poster of vomit,
but the latest layer of your life.

There are days when it is impossible not to step on a crack.

Never cross under a ladder when someone is working above you.

A broken mirror needs to attach splinters to your hand.

A black cat may be a jaguar or a lynx,
the magik of night a trick of light.
To see a black panther in the wild…

Do you not know ugly layers of life build into scars
like the corrosive power of salt,
the obsession to spit on a broom,
the inability to let go of hands at a pole?

Feeling Down For No Reason At All by Ross Vassilev

2010-07-28T07:19:00.000-04:00

the SS go
marching
through
my dreams.

I wake up
with acne
on the back
of my neck
and a huge
centipede
on the wall.
the phone
rings.

a woman
offers
me a new
credit card.

it's a tough
choice
between
her and
the Nazis.

Older by Stephen Jarrell Williams

2010-07-28T07:17:00.001-04:00

I ache
between the shakes of excitement,
seeing what I want to see
under my cap of perception,

playing a harmonica,
dancing in a bad place
with a bad girl,

painting her gold
later in my apartment,

lost in her young years,
she does me and leaves.

Now angels floating over my bed,
sticking needles in my dimples.

I'm suddenly old,
wanting another day,
another night and spit between the sheets,

saying my prayers in this prick of a world.

Two by Ross Vassilev

2010-06-29T07:49:00.000-04:00

humanity is a bitch

to survive in America
you gotta tiptoe
among nightshades
of nuclear war

dance round
mushroom clouds
of serial killers

escape from
the hangman’s noose
of poverty and the
chopping block of
the prison system.

when I was young
I wanted to save
humanity (like you’re
supposed to, I guess)

now I’m 32
and I just say

fuck it.

#

free medical advice

working the
graveyard shift
at the factory.

there was
a big blonde
about 19

the problem was
her face was
all covered in zits.

I wanted to tell
her there’s
a cure for that

but that got me
fired from one
job already

and I was out of
unemployment
benefits.

I admired her ass
for a while
then clocked in.

it’s people like me
who keep the
economy going.

She's Not Much For Small Talk by Catfish McDaris

2010-06-29T07:43:00.001-04:00

"I haven't had any
in 5 years. I go home
every night & make
love to my hand"

He told me this
while riding
the elevator

A woman we knew
slightly got on,
she looked at my
pal & said, "Damn,
you're going to need
a bra soon"

I tried not
to laugh

Every Tuesday, we'd
drink beer & watch
Sheriff Lobo

Tuesday came,
he opened the door
a crack, "Hey, man,
I've got a date"

I thought
that's cool

Before he closed the
door I noticed a box,
bicycle pump, wig &
lipstick

All for his dipstick.

Shadow Play by Cecilia Stelzer

2010-06-22T14:39:00.001-04:00

i was young
and we would do nothing.
but i would imagine
that behind us
our shadows were in love
running and tackling each other
in that world we would
laugh and fuck in different shapes
growing
tall
and
thin.

Lucid Dream w/ Ribbons by Shawn Misener

2010-06-13T20:18:00.000-04:00

I sat down on the edge of a fifty foot tile cliff
in the lobby of some modern hotel and saw
a giant circle of silky paper ribbons below

turned to the guy next to me
and said: I'm dreaming

he replied he knew as much

I said: I can do whatever I want
with those ribbons
and I did
making them change colors
form shapes like fish and radiating suns
and sending lightning ripples through them

I stilled my mind
and watched how each thought that bubbled up
caused the ribbons to twitch and wave

I'm watching my mind from up here
I told the man
he again said he knew as much.

I'm Not Here by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

2010-05-31T23:07:00.000-04:00

I’m not here
for no bullshit.
Let me leave.

You don’t need
to contact my
family.

They don’t have
to know I’m
locked up here.

Can’t you see
caterpillars
bit my toes?

This is why
I can’t walk. You
should know this.

I don’t want
my leg cut off.
When I die

I want to
meet my Maker
in one piece.

Keep your pills
away from me.
They’re poison.

Got Oil? by Joseph M. Gant

2010-05-31T08:42:00.000-04:00

shoot it
stab it
fuck it dead
dry
cold
fist that loves
you
more
than nothing
smears
the juice
of rape
across eyes
and you
smell it

Tits by Lara Konesky

2010-05-20T13:01:00.001-04:00

we were standing in the parking lot
when he told me
the last time he came on her tits
she was horrified and got up
to take a shower

He said I miss that you would let me cum on your tits
and just rubbed that shit in
and wouldn't shower for days
just to smell like me

and later said I was the only witness to who he once was

and I said

it fucking blows when your only witness
is insane

it makes your case a lot weaker, anyhow.

The Newlywed Couple Feel Some Inertia at The Falls by Melanie Browne

2010-05-20T11:27:00.001-04:00

Inside their
whiskey barrel,
They are strange
Contortionists,

He reads To her
From Evelyn Waugh,
While she
Gouges their
Names in
linoleum
on her barstool

They hang
God's eyes
From the
damp
Housetop,

Sometimes
He goes out
To collect
The mail,

When he comes back
In he talks about rainbows
while she listens
To the clawing
Of the spray,

He unhooks her bra
Feeling her breasts
Kissing her stomach,
She is passive,
Her veil lingers
Like the vapors

Poem for Todd Moore (In Memoriam) by Craig Sernotti

2010-05-19T09:17:00.002-04:00

in the poems of todd moore you'll find

life
& death &
dust &
booze &
truth &
a sawed
off double
barrel
aimed at
your balls
& you
will gladly
choke
on the
blood
in his
words
& ask
for more
with a
shit
eating
grin
on your
face

- previously published in Blood at the Chelsea (Erbacce Press)

Devotion by Scott Urban

2010-04-25T07:15:00.001-04:00

If I were a pillbug, I would still love you.
I would live inside the walls of your house.
I would polish the segments of my carapace
until they shone like a new, miniature Volkswagen.
I would bring all of my five thousand six hundred
eighty nine friends out beneath the floorboards
to show off the beauty I have found in you.
I would curl up into a tiny gray knot of ecstasy
even as you bring down your sole on me.

Prosaic Fusebox Doll by Inchiki

2010-04-24T07:19:00.000-04:00

empty paper
fills her head
while the unspent impulses
play themselves out internally

i seek an inky end
a suitable epilogue
to useless hours
of woeful wanking
and unwisely tweaking thoughts
passtimes appropriate
to the dejected fop

internal wires pop
one by one and fizz
with the effort of creation
the flashes of insight
have left her a face of burnt holes
vacantly unable to follow conversations

& when her lips elope with my words
it's like
dragged onto the bank
a body afloat on the river
was fed patient breaths
but spirit freed from flesh
won't easily return

maybe i have just one more spark in me for you
the voltage burns from the temples down
when suddenly i touch the paper
- and with a jolt
the heartbeat returns -
i turn you on
and you turn on me

my scarred creature
a whole lifetime of effusions i have built
to fill this restaurant bill
attack that plate
flap your lips at food
i spoon my loveliest words at you
as if your were capable of eating

Town and Country by Zachary Whalen

2010-04-23T06:56:00.001-04:00

I know that if this town burned
I could rebuild it.

All I need is SimCity 2000 and the replica
attached to the back of my hand.

Some people never get in the zone.
It's sad, we end up as dirt or covered in it.

Let's score that touchdown. We'll walk away bleeding.
We'll hype the shit out of each other.

We can sell our drugs to the children.
They can be as happy and as popular as we were.

I piss myself and hope
the piss molecules can find a better life as well.

Listen to the sound of oxygen escaping your lungs.
That's the only sound that makes me happy now.

I want to bury your childhood beneath a mountain
or a large blue square zoned for commercial development.

***

A mountain of commercial developments
buried beneath the large blue square of childhood.

Happiness is nothing we can listen to.
The only sound is your lungs escaping from the oxygen.

Even the piss molecules piss themselves.
I hope this is a better life.

We're so happy and popular.
Our children sell drugs.

Walk away from me and bleed.
Believe your own hype. Touchdown.

It's dirty to be sad or to end up covered in sadness.
Let's get in the zone.

All you need is the back of my hand
replicated 2000 times and attached to the side of your face.

I could burn everything if you ever rebuilt this country.
You know that.

Shameless Self-Promotion

2010-04-21T10:16:00.002-04:00

My first poetry collection has been released from Blue Room Publishing. Forked Tongue can be ordered from Amazon.com.

Hudson by Holly Day

2010-04-08T23:50:00.001-04:00

The lawnmower makes me wish
I was an animal, some four-footed hoofed thing
that lived on flowers and tree bark.
Its noise makes me run and
hide in my room.
These clothes make me wish
I was pure beast, a sleeked-furred carnivore
that gave birth in a den,
fed carrion to my children.
These clothes make me ugly and
keep me meek.
This bed makes me wish
I was alone, or something with claws,
that I had my own scent, and not that of the man
that lumbers in here at night
and says that I'm his.

Climbing Mountains Handless by Amanda Deo

2010-04-08T15:12:00.001-04:00

I work on a dream every day. Spend
hours in meetings calling people out
on bullshit. Thinking about
what I'd rather be doing
like drinking in Montreal or
making a difference or
wondering why I've
never learned to
pronounce the
word love
properly.

It seems difficult
to get all of these
things worked out
in time. You think
eighty years is enough
but I've gone through
the first twenty-six
and I'm not any
closer.

Bruce Who Reads, Gabrielle Who Knits by John Grey

2010-02-26T09:20:00.000-05:00

Bruce reads the poems of Tennyson,
a half inch from her ear,

careful, slow, but exalted nevertheless,
so she'll feel the presence of the poem
like he feels her presence,

in him, in his voice,
and she smiles warm but awkwardly

like she's The Lady of Shallot
hearing about herself for the
very first time.

Why Tennyson, that long dead Englishman,
white-bearded, whiter-haired,
and musty on the page.

For "she weaveth steadily
and little other care hath she."

And Bruce is not about
to tell her that.

Dream Girl by Mike Meraz

2010-02-25T09:14:00.001-05:00

a girl in the apartment
next to mine
walks in high heels
on wood floors.
I have no idea what she looks like
but I can only guess:
blonde
with thick thighs
wearing a mini skirt.
she is carrying a coffee cup
thinking about a poem she just read,
this poem.

Pancakes Like a Head Injury by Melanie Browne

2010-02-12T13:40:00.003-05:00

We ordered pancakes.
He wanted strawberries,
He wanted bananas,
They brought his pancakes
To the table they were
Covered in strawberries
They were covered in bananas
He said this pancake looks
Like its bleeding will
You look at that it looks like it
Has a head injury or something
And I looked at his pancakes
I said well, you know something
I think you may be right
And he dug right in to those
Pancakes and they were
Swimming in syrup
But all I saw was the
Strawberries that still
Looked like blood to me
and I found it all a bit distasteful

A Sudden Deer by David McLean

2010-02-12T13:36:00.002-05:00

here comes the instant, a sudden deer
crashing through branches,
clumsier than expected

and it is sudden as animals are,
as it returns forever
through the one body,

you as if inside me.
here comes the instant, a sudden deer
to hang in time, a second forever,

because of life and you,
suddenly another nothing in me, instants
better than any eternity

Tentative Target Practice by David S. Pointer

2010-02-12T13:29:00.001-05:00

After the battered
women's shelter
didn't want or
welcome her
anymore, Beth
moved into a
motorcycle sidecar-
sized apartment,
and for twelve
years she felt
the psychic bitch
slaps of abandonment
as she practiced
shooting at her ex-
husband until one
intoxicated training
session she popped
a live cap hissing
through the red
pear patterned
wallpaper killing
a sleeping infant
and just missing
a jumping deer
dinner plate hanging
on some evicted
ex-con's kitchen
wall in the only
empty apartment

Haiku by David S. Pointer

2010-02-12T06:34:00.001-05:00

urban dog soldier
eats Aztec enchiladas
rolling to Sturgis

#

jellied human nose
on the gargoyle's fork
at your mom's house

#

Black Flag
raising the heat index
on the Marine base

Standing Over Me by Stephen Jarrell Williams

2010-02-12T06:30:00.000-05:00

Holding me down
with one foot on my chest

I gaze up
at the underbellies of your breasts

wanting to touch them again
with the rest of your swaying

soft in the sand
on the beach you stripped

the both of us sweating
in rain and lightning

you laugh
as the tide rushes in

water foaming around my ears
I can't get up

you're declaring some victory
yelling out to sea

the next wave covering my face
with eyes blurry and stinging

still
smiling up to you.

Rage by Lyn Lifshin

2010-02-08T00:33:00.000-05:00

a flower that
explodes, something
you once thought
you wanted to
curl near,
stroke, becomes
a nail bomb
breaking apart in
your throat
so even your last
words bleed

Shameless Self-Promotion

2010-02-04T10:41:00.001-05:00

I have started a new blog to chronicle the development of my first poetry book, Forked Tongue. Check it out.

Timber by David Lawrence

2010-02-01T22:24:00.001-05:00

The glow is separated from the bowl like a yawn
While you are still sleeping.
I can’t find my fingers when they are kidnapped
By these gloves.
I suck on your air looking for candies
But give you my wallet
Because I am an all day sucker.
You arrived at the tip of my erection to build
Cities in my imagination.
I can’t keep away from you when you are in my face.
I like your confrontation.
The seal barks his last bark before turning
Into a wet log.
I am backstroking down the river with you on
My stomach.
When we arrive at our completion
I will look for inferences in your beginning.

Self-Interview by David Blaine

2010-01-30T08:02:00.003-05:00

Q: So, you’ve written a book of poetry, and what, now you think you’re a poet?

A: No, I’ve written closer to a thousand poems, many of them published, including three chapbooks. The first two books were self-published, and I sold two printings of each. That doesn’t make me a poet though; it makes me an entrepreneur. The readers who bought the books would have to tell you if I was a poet or not. It’s always about the reader, not the writer.

Q: Well, in your reviews, at least one writer, Mel Bosworth, stepped up and said he wasn’t sure you were a poet.

A: Right, he said he wasn’t sure the moniker, poet, fit. But he thought I was a damn good writer. I’ll take that any day. I really don’t care about titles. I want to know if my work is reaching an audience. If it is, I don’t care what they call me.

Q: So you’re a poet who doesn’t care if people say you’re not a poet?

A: I guess so. One of my inspirations as a youngster was Carl Sandberg. And I’ll never forget what Robert Frost said about him: “Writing poetry without rhyme is like playing tennis without a net.” And Robert and Carl were friends. That may have been where the phrase was coined, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”

Q: But you think Sandburg was a poet?

A: Oh, sure, but what I think doesn’t matter. Just like what Frost thought doesn’t matter. Carl earned the title “People’s Poet.” He also won a few awards. I met his daughter, Helga, online. She’s feisty, but she’s proud of her father.

Q: You met Helga Sandburg?

A: Yes. I was researching her father and found a newspaper clipping about a reading she’d done. Figuring she was elderly, and figuring she wouldn’t travel far to do a reading, I checked the phone book for that city. She was listed.

Q: Did you call her?

A: No, I didn’t think I should just call her. But I mailed a letter to her, snail mail. I asked her about her father.

Q: And she answered, obviously?

A: Oh, yes. She told me anything I would want to know could be found in her books.

Q: Ouch!

A: Exactly! So I read several of her books and found out that when she was her dad’s secretary, he had a lot of canned reply letters, and they were numbered. One of them was a letter saying, roughly, “Anything you could want to know would be found in my books.” So I wrote back and said, “I see I got number sixteen,” or whatever number it was. We got along well after that, but I started asking questions about her, not Carl.

Q: Any special reason you were inspired by Sandburg?

A: Well, I did enjoy his poetry. I think all Midwestern school kids read “Chicago” and “Fog” in school. And he lived in Michigan for a time. With Helga’s instructions, I was able to locate their home on Lake Michigan. Standing on their old front porch, facing the water, was tantamount to a religious experience for me.

Q: Did the owners run you off?

A: No. I’m sure they would have if they’d been there, but I went in the off-season, October.

Q: Well, tell me some living poets you enjoy.

A: That’s not hard, but I don’t now if you’d have heard of them. There is Matthew Dickman, out of Portland. His book, All American Poem, won the Honickman last year. There is Susan Yount, from Chicago. Her first book is coming out this year. There are so many deserving authors, and so few people who buy books. It’s a miracle when someone gets published, no matter how good his work is.

Q: Do you have an answer for that problem, too few people buying books?

A: Sure, write better books. But I’m not sure if that’s an answer that will make a difference!

Q: Who would buy your book?

A: You mean besides my mother?

Q: Yes, of course, besides your mother.

A: I think that people who don’t usually read poetry would enjoy my book. Whether they want to call it poetry, prosody, prose poems, or vignettes. Like I said earlier, titles don’t do anything for me. I think people who are open minded and intelligent will enjoy what’s laid out in my lines.

Q: Your book, Antisocial, why that title?

A: Well, there is a Canadian band called The Tragically Hip, and they’ve got a song called “Poets” that reads, “Don’t tell me what the poets are doing, don’t tell me that they’re talking tough. Don’t tell me that they’re antisocial. Somehow not antisocial enough.” That’s one reason. The subject matter is another. Poems that touch on things like teenage pregnancy, auto theft, bestiality, and war, well, what are you going to call a collection like that? Plus, we aren’t supposed to talk about those things in polite conversation, which is really an antisocial stance itself.

Q: Do you think of yourself as antisocial?

A: No, I love mankind, but I really prefer to spend my time alone. If there is a contradiction there, well, I can live with it. I can live alone with it.

Q: Would you like it if this book made you famous?

A: God no! I look at celebrities, like Oprah, and wonder what the hell they want. I would like my work to become popular, but I don’t want people coming to my door asking for interviews or autographs, ever.

Q: What advice would you have for people trying to publish their first book?

A: When you think your work is ready, and your readers will tell you that, do everything you can to help other writers. It may seem counter intuitive, but you can’t bull your way into print. You need to get a lot of people behind you. Critique, review, mentor, and cross your fingers.

Antisocial by David Blaine

Three Poems by Lyn Lifshin

2010-01-30T07:57:00.000-05:00

HE SAID THE NIGHTMARE POEMS BLEED

he said they were
too real to be
dreams. He said
they scared him,
a parallel world,
deeper than DNA.
Terrifying he
said, the words
were armed, were
bleeding all
over the page

#

WHEN, AT THE BALLET BARRE, THE MAD GIRL REALIZES

the only relief,
that she could
end it all, this
going thru the
motions. She is
sick of fantasy
being more real
than her life.
On the metro,
only gray. In
ballet, the gray
leaks in thru
her skin, braids
with a litany
of dreads. She
can’t remember
when she stopped
looking ahead
but only backward

#

TOO EARLY FOR THIS

October wind,
hardly a cricket.
What’s inside
curls into itself,
loses its color
like the maple.
Hardly a crow,
only a last blaze
of sun as if to
apologize for
all that's gone

A Mythic Struggle by Steve Calamars

2010-01-24T08:19:00.001-05:00

in a staring contest
with medusa

i'd leave her with
wet panties and eyes
blinking like strobe lights

i'd ease my fingers
up her skirt and turn
her legs to silicone

on her knees and
gripping my hips

her lips wrapped
around a monster

she'd stare into my eyes
and try to swallow a
cyclops whole

Nine Ways to View a Bully by Michael H. Brownstein

2010-01-21T12:37:00.001-05:00

1.

It is our nature to stop and view the lightning.

2.

Stones, too, can be named.

3.

The biggest mouth belongs to a fish.

4.

When you run with garbage, you begin to stink.

5.

Rape is not always a physical act.

6.

The man you think you break may be the one who owns the glue.

7.

Everything will come, my friend, on the wind or in a storm, on feathers or rust.

8.

The best way to view a bully is from a distance and off to the left.

9.

Perhaps all that is needed is a tree.

One Night Stand by Neila Mezynski

2010-01-21T12:31:00.001-05:00

She wanted to run him over, show him who's boss. He wanted her. Slow. Her gingham dress, sweet but tight as hell. Show those curves and middle of the road, torn, bent, bowed over. A regular mess.

Shameless Self Promotion

2010-01-15T10:36:00.002-05:00

My first poetry collection, Forked Tongue, will be released in March 2010 from Blue Room Publishing. Prepare thyself.

Flu by Catfish McDaris

2010-01-09T04:22:00.000-05:00

I feel like dog crap
in a burning bag
in a yellow snow bank

Cat shitpuke in house shoes
squeamishly squeezed
between each toe

Slimy turds thrown into
my eyes by accurate
caged pedophiles

Boogers barf
a rat's asshole
set on fire
with gasoline.

The Bus Ride by Ivan Brkaric

2010-01-06T15:45:00.000-05:00

Over her shoulder
she looks with disgust.

You happen to catch
a glimpse of her.

Pulling her panties
out of her ass crack
and fondling
her breasts.

Under her breath
she makes a
smart remark.

As if it is your fault
that she sat
in the seat
right next
to you.

Mea Culpa by Paul Harrison

2010-01-06T15:30:00.001-05:00

sweet Jesus
just so you know
it was me who
killed Cock Robin
and Bambi's mother too
it was me who
shot the sheriff
got high with
the Manson crew
it was me who
butchered my neighbors
it was me who
guarded the gates
it was me who
toasted the generals
mocking the disappeared
it was me who
raped thru Fallujah
ran fear with the Tonton Macoute
just so you know sweet Jesus
it was me
down
merciless centuries
who mocked
and murdered you

One Year Later by Neila Mezynski

2009-11-29T07:46:00.001-05:00

Her sweet face hardened, she probably thought that about me.

We have both widened.

Animal Sleep by John Grey

2009-11-29T07:31:00.000-05:00

I’ve dreamed the quiet gather
of petting zoo lambs
and the fierce blood roar
of the pouncing tiger.
I’ve owned every breed of dog in my sleep,
even a pig that grunted in English:
“The other white meat is llama.”
In truth, with head on pillow,
I need to get away from people.
What’s it matter if
I’m in the deep woods all alone
and the bear threatens attack.
Who cares that the swamp
is full of crocodiles.
The beasts can speak
so I have my conversation.
Many will bite
so I can catch my rest
delightfully on edge.
They growl, they howl,
their fur bristles,
their beaks peck,
their mood changes
with the first glimpse
of an untouched deer carcass.
And, best of all,
when I awaken,
there’s not a one of them beside me,
not even the family cat.
No scars, no shedding,
no waste, no stains.
Just this flesh, these bones,
slow mesh of daylight and my head.
Thoughts replace imaginings.
That’s all there is to the beast in me.

Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire by Catfish McDaris

2009-11-09T14:45:00.002-05:00

He asked me if I'd
read before him

"Sort of warm up
the crowd for
the main attraction"
he chuckled

I replied,"Sure,
remember the time
Hendrix opened for
The Monkees?"

Wrinkles of doubt
clouded his forehead.

Babe by Karyn Eisler

2009-11-06T11:58:00.003-05:00

"There are some things you should know before we meet," he said.

I tell myself I should have canceled the date. Twenty years have passed. He's still here.

"Red flag," they said to me.

I whispered, "Babe, it's no big deal," then I licked his ear.

Absorb by Dorothee Lang

2009-11-03T06:54:00.000-05:00

the heat will be born
trusting awake
we see happy evil
mismatches
green visions
of a pattern

in the depth
the victim unlearns the past
never knowing
how

who was by Todd Moore

2009-10-14T12:25:00.001-04:00

who was

at the door
i asked
my old
man sd
death
he had
the dt's
& tried
to take
my pecker
did you
let him
have it
i asked
my old man
smiled
into his
glass sd
no
but i got
his bone

The Art of Being No Help by John Grey

2009-10-14T07:42:00.002-04:00

somewhere
someone
is making another do
something
they don't want to do
and the thought
of that coercion
guts the landscape
strips it down
to raw wildness
too bestial for
my sensibilities
as my fear caves in
to wind and cold
and suggestion
my pathetic protests
shrunk to footsteps
cranking up
the neighborhood
with dumb echo
and I do it so well
my powerlessness
becomes religion
and the air smells
like both surrender
and escape
and I don't care
for one and
get high on
the other

- originally published in Palace Corbie #5 (1994)

Don't Cry for This Love of Blood by Doug Rice

2009-10-13T07:53:00.002-04:00

I know how to pray.

I begin coming.

A word falls.

She tells me to hold still. Wait until I feel my fingers becoming red. Until my fingers are old red. Here with her. I hold my fingers in place inside her. In places my fingers move. Her body. Cunt down onto my bent wrist. I want my hand further in her but she is too small or too tight. Or it is an angle. I'm afraid. This may hurt. I'm afraid I will hurt you. I'll break your wrist. "Relax your muscles and collapse onto my hand." Let go. Two fingers two knuckles deep and twisted inside her. She stays perfectly still. I keep my fingers silent inside the inside of her cunt. Now, a third finger two knuckles deep. A fourth. She refuses movement but her eyes are frantic. I can see the flow of blood in her eyes. There can be no words in this much bleeding. My fingers becoming red. Her blood down my arm. For two days. For three nights. To not give in to fatigue. Her blood remains on my fingers. I pray I become her blood. She could no longer locate her bleeding through names. There is no place in here, she once told me, for making letters. Just a pause in her speech. To see blood without saying. This morning I am nothing but my birth. But I can't cover myself in skin again.

- originally appeared in Yellow Bat Review #1 (2001)

Four by Todd Moore

2009-10-13T06:32:00.002-04:00

waco grabbed

fuller's hat & threw
it to me & fuller
sd you'd better give
it back & waco went
up to the old man
like he was abt
to give the old
man a slap upside
the head fuller
hooked a knife in
to waco's right
leg & he went oh
mama while i
dropped the hat
when fuller picked
it up & put it
back on he sd never
fuck w/a man's hat
waco was still bent
over when fuller
winked at me & sd
he ain't gonna
die but he'll be
walking real funny

- originally appeared in Lummox Journal Vol. 6, No. 4, 2000

#

rocko & lonnie each had

a dead man propped in the
back of the pickup parked
behind smitty's salvage
waiting for someone to
come for the corpses &
while they were waiting
lonnie started moving his
dead man's mouth & say
ing stuff so you think
yr a smart guy he sez
sounding a little like
curly of the 3 stooges &
it made rocko laugh &
he started doing it too
& the mouth on his wasn't
even stiff but the whis
kers were matted & when
he opened it up some
scabs wd fall out & he
pretended they were
words & sez you wanna
make something of it
& curly really did look
like he was whooping
except his eyes wdn't
move

- originally appeared in Asylums & Labyrinths, 1997

#

the day after

they got sonny at
the corner of
3rd & colorado
jake & i went down
to welty's garage
to see the car
old man welty
rolled a wet
stogie around in
his mouth sd it's
the green ply
mouth out back
all i ask is you
don't fuck w/any
thing there was
nothing to fuck
w/except 3 bullet
holes thru the
windshield jake
opened the door
& brushed all the
glass off the
seat before
sitting down
then he lit a
cigaret took
a long drag &
sd i can taste
death in the
smoke

- originally appeared in Asylums & Labyrinths, 1997

#

collins sd mona

can make her pussy bark
like a dog i smiled &
sd bullshit so when she
came out of the hotel's
back door collins
waved her over is it
still 5 bucks to
show us yr pussy she
grinned & we went
around the side of
the shed where she
pulled her pants down
i was holding the money
& she sd that's the
bank make yr deposit
the crotch of her
panties was dark
w/shit tracks now
collins sd make it
bark like a dog so she
put her hand inside
the hair got hold of
her pussy & moved the
lips while she was
doing the barking see
i sd she gave me a
look jesus the meat
does the work
you have to pretend

- originally appeared in Asylums & Labyrinths, 1997

with gasoline by John Sweet

2009-10-12T18:33:00.002-04:00

first boy
soaks the second
with gasoline

sets him on fire
beneath
a wide open sky

and which one would you
choose for your
own

which would
you use to define
the word love

what finally
matters is how
much pain you're
willing to
endure

- originally published in Yellow Bat Review #1 (2001)

Afterwards It Was Like by Lyn Lifshin

2009-10-12T07:57:00.001-04:00

having a 16 year old
daughter who's only
had her license for a

month so when it
starts snowing, going
out trying to find

her, heading to where
she was going to
buy a gift, driving

behind her only to see
the car collide with
a pick-up and having

to pull her from the
burning car, her
hair ash and even tho

you're a volunteer
fireman, have done
this many times, when

you lay her body
down it might as well
be yours

- originally appeared in frisson #8 (1997)

Haiku by Craig Sernotti

2009-10-12T07:33:00.002-04:00

what do the dead see
in this yellow water
frozen & insane

- originally appeared in Yellow Bat Review #1, 2001

Two by Julie M. Tate

2009-10-11T23:23:00.001-04:00

He’s a Drummer by Trade
(originally published in Cram, 2008)

We can smoke a pack apiece
in the time we spend together.
We must make do with minutes we’re given
between set up and the tearing down
of our painted masks,
from the stage to reality and back again.
He lights two, sometimes three at once.
A drummer by trade, he’s coordinated like that.
He can pull his hair and bite his nails
at the same time too.
It’s endearing, if irritating.
He licks his lips,
a sure sign he’s wound too tight.
He bites his cigarette with purpose
like a neck marked in needed rapture.
At the end of the night,
wrapped in fantasies as large as his hands,
I am a barren field waiting to be sown
with fertile seeds of anxiety.
Massive realization blooms wide eyed revelation
as he breathes relief over me.
Our cancerous exhales fall like a heavy curtain.
Morse code, staccato breathing, S.O.S.,
panting like the dawn will never come,
his wide mouth begs the sun to stay asleep.
But that’s not the way this story goes tonight
and the threadbare truce between us
is held only by our silence.

#

The White City

The sky over Navy Pier is the muted blue of Tylenol P.M.’s, unnaturally warm wind runs ribbons across my skin. The skyline rises royally from the mist; I kneel, kiss her hand, and touch an inviting Lake Michigan. Deceptive minx, Antarctica lay beneath. The booths are empty. Old ads rustle like the ghosts of dead carnival workers begging you bear witness to their miracle. There’s a little girl wearing hot pink bug-eye sunglasses stepping carefully around a leftover rain puddle. “It’s inevitable, let go and get dirty,” I whisper from a nearby bench. She doesn’t.

Defeated brown leaves crunch beneath tired feet, The Cure on repeat in my ears as stragglers pass, dance and remain oblivious. None of them look happy. The closed carousel smells like an antique shop. I scale over the concrete embankment into the tent, fingers molesting chipped horses. The bulbs flick bright, “Fuck,” I spit at the violent lights. I don’t want to see the Pier’s painted face; I prefer the romantic bitterness of the landmark facing the fog.

I relax against the chests of Lake Point Tower condos I’ll never own. They deliver me to bus route 33, the Magnificent Mile Express, where Rachmaninoff is now my backdrop. People duck into over-dressed drug stores and coffee shops. I wonder if they feel the city swallow them as well or if they’re used to suffocating. Each person eventually scatters, a dot to be connected by a small series of journeys at a later date. I use these human maps to guide me and arrive at the mercy of the Blue Line. A brief fantasy: this train could kill me or deliver me to my dirty cotton sheets: One step off the tracks or back to let steel slice past.

Off at Damen and up rusted stairs, snag a finger on the hand rail. My apartment is heated like a tongue kiss; I light a lazy cigarette and lay waste to the small refrigerator’s contents: Giordano’s my mother bought two months ago, expired milk and can of strawberry Slim Fast. I don't like strawberries but drink it anyway because vitamins promise to pluck my tired frame from its sad tree. The last ingestible thing in the house is half a bottle of Jameson’s Irish Whisky. Oh luxury.

I soak my wounded finger in Epsom salts. The thought of what's possibly crawling through my bloodstream scares me. The air is heavy like rare steak, so thick with scent you could devour it, weighted with exhaust fumes, cigarettes, Angel perfume, thick merlot and condos I’ll never realize. Always without fail I’m brought back home. I have no destination left as I sink into the sound of a thousand neon lights, a thousand boys and girls dreaming awake.

Two by Lyn Lifshin

2009-10-11T08:16:00.004-04:00

JANUARY 7 1985

east dissolves
like a man who
is just cigar
smoke by morning.
Ashes blow in
to the bread,
the cat throws up
what she gulped
down. In the
mail box, only
letters with
windows

#

THAT APRIL

the light on
Chinese dogwood

more substantial
than my own

body. The
bed a pool

with no bottom
where I treaded

water, pulled
at the

nothing
between us

- Both poems originally appeared in Joey and the Black Boots #20 (1998)

Insignificance by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

2009-10-11T07:17:00.001-04:00

When I feel small, like a grain of sand, I am insignificant.
When I grow tired of my insignificance I imagine I am tall,
rising over mountains. I usually end up sinking into a vast
sea. Loaded up on medicine, I can barely keep my small
eyes open. I drown in a sea of sand.

I Play David Attenborough by Khrynn McManus

2009-10-11T07:05:00.003-04:00

1C
The hermit. He does not go out, except for groceries, after dark. We pretend we’re having an Elvis sighting. He is either very kind or terrified of telephones, not to complain of the noise we make, stampeding to the refrigerator or breathing - the kids playing H-bomb with their Lilliputian feet, the kids playing H-bomb with the toy box junk, the kids playing H-bomb up and down the walls the halls the stairwells, the whole goddamned atlas. I wonder if the cops will come for his corpse when enough of us complain of the stench.

3C
The crack-smoker. We are privy to her every bowel movement and boyfriend spat. I know, for example, that she eats nothing but fast food (that all of her furniture is rent-to-own that she vacuums the carpeting obsessively that she gives head for drugs). Her eleven-month-old son is microscopic, a fat-headed fetus. She never thinks to cradle him, never thinks to coo at him, only ever squawks at him Shut Up! Dammit! Shut Up! When he gurgles and shrieks, up there in third floor heaven, I want to beat his mother dead. Every other morning, between three and four, we can hear her fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking fucking. She rents the creakiest bed in the Occident. It lasts three hours and fourteen minutes; they give up at dawn in a steroid stupor. When it's over, her human meat mallet pisses, minutes-long over our heads as we lie inert, not sleeping, not fucking, only clocking the angry digital perpetuation of minutes it takes for him to be done with pissing. From time to time, her menthol butts settle upon our balcony, aborted embryonic doves, mute and crushed and tidy.

2D
Empty.

3D
The obligatory born again Christian. She has a frustrated twitchy air of esprit de l'escalier about her. Someone called her Jesus Freak or Holy Roller once; now she waits for an opportunity to take it out on the rest of us. She weighs seventy-nine pounds precisely, mainly cheekbones and string-hair. She is starved. She will eat only cheese and vanilla ice cream. The Blood she says The Blood not speaking of The Blood of the Lamb but of other beef butchered on the hoof, the ones they wrap in cellophane and put on display at the supermarket. She feels safe confiding these things to me; she just knows I am a vegetarian. I want to tell her what they do to dairy cows. She has let me in once or twice to borrow quarters for laundry. She almost never answers her door. (The knocking may be bacteria or automatic weapons.) Her apartment is decorated in garlic cloves: Latin crosses, The Footprints In The Sand, a silkscreened Last Supper, doves under rainbows, a Caucasian messiah weeping in Gethsemane. Her keychain is a Gnostic fish but she does not know what "Gnostic" means only that "agnostic" means SOMETHING BAD. The dictionary is in cahoots with Beelzebub.

1D
The married Russians. I know so little and so much about them; their behavior puzzles me. The woman leaves the building only twice a day. The man sits in his car for hours at a time. He is the old-fashioned type, with his hunchbacked wife, keeping her always to the rear of him when they go for walks in the evenings. I have heard him, more than once, rebuking her in their guttural Slavic tongue, stentorian and vehement - absolute as a despot - though he must be less than half her size, the skinny pup. She boils cabbage incessantly. It stinks up the hallways. It worries me. I do not think she knows I watch her when she goes behind the building to dispose of their garbage. It happens each afternoon, around three. I have convinced myself she is younger than she appears to be. Her cheeks swag and droop, a bulldog's. Her breasts have the ponderous, lolling mien of pachyderms and fertility totems. There is a hook in the center of the bridge of her nose. It snarls up her profile. It is the origin of her unhappiness. At sunset, the two of them sit on folding chairs in the parking lot, but they are not really sitting together; she is never allowed to drive the car. I fantasize about them, invent scenarios for anniversary gifts: He comes in from washing the car, and she sets out his supper soup. He tells her right away it is too sour too cold too hot too predictable. She will stamp her foot. That is how it begins. Arming herself with oven mitts, she will overturn their tiny table and scorch the bastard with cabbage water! Baffled and appalled, he shall topple down, a dainty husk against the china hutch, the salt cellar on the lam, the glass phallus of the merlot menstruating on the white, a surprise hermaphrodite. . .

2C
Safe as houses.

Prose Poem: Eileen Sullivan

2009-10-01T12:39:00.000-04:00

Epic Mimicry and Studied Elegance

Too late to write. Too early to sleep. Too tired to talk. Too wired to stop. My night drifts into your day. Guitar too heavy to lift. Songs too hard to hear. The bed beckons, one side bursting from the wealth of books, the other empty, expecting my acceptance, my shallow shuddering breathing. And all we know is what we learned, and what we learned is all we know. We know it all except the secrets of our hearts. We live and pose, facsimile, until the feeling starts. One hears words, another a song. Both a dirge and somehow wrong. And the moon looks on at the fools, its laughter ripples the heavens, waves of undulating mirth that never reach the earth.

Prose Poem: Elissa Gordon

2009-10-01T12:38:00.002-04:00

Potentiometer

Last week a $500 auto repair, a throttle body sensor, a skip, a jump in the signal, after nine years, the press of a pedal no longer tells the whole story of how much fuel is being sent. Get out the gauge. My mechanic kneels down to diagram the problem for me, just as he had in his office. In my muddled dreams the instrument slipped in his hand and pointed directly at me. The needle quivered, hovered just above zero, barely registering, like that time at the DMV, back when they still used Polaroids, and they had to take my photo three times amid the laughter and vampire jokes.

Prose Poem: Robert Scotellaro

2009-10-01T12:32:00.003-04:00

Black
(originally published in Clockwise Cat)

The day they stole my father - the sky would have been black and low enough to bruise a man's shoulders. He must have been weak from the flu, a buckle beating, or a bad back - too weary to resist.

The car, I imagined: black, or a hunter's green Caddy with a shark's-teeth grill. The blacktop, a chain pulling it/him along south—blacking out from the heat. His captors in the back, on either side, smoking cigarettes and laughing. Forcing him, later, to remarry - the gun metal singeing his shiny black hair.

All those miles piled up behind him - one screeching crash after another. The black heart, my mother said, he took with him - far and safe enough away - it couldn't hear a thing.

#

A Pretty Rain
(originally published in Willows Wept Review)

One day it rains a pretty rain, and everyone it touches knows beauty. Cars and houses quickly empty. Already attractive people stand in it, naked, against that one gray hair or bit of flab. Plain Janes splash in its puddles with a warrior's cry; erasing the sadness from their cheeks.

But the next day an ugly rain falls, with disquieting effects. Umbrellas blossom much too late. Forecasters are stumped. People wait indoors with wart-tipped noses against the glass. Which will it be?

It's cold as the fat clouds darken. A wise snow comes, weighing on the eaves. Filling the hollows of hats, and slipping into the darkness of high boots; tracked and crunched. A deep snow. A quiet snow, gathering - nearly luminous. Whispering down and landing on wide-eyed faces. And all will have to rethink everything.

Prose Poem: Carol L. Berg

2009-10-01T12:29:00.001-04:00

Cousins Island

The parking lot a crescent moon. Dirt road with craters big as your Volkswagen Beetle you've parked out on the jut facing the bridge where bare chested boys plunge into the green ocean's mouth. The Grateful Dead sing Sugar Magnolia from speakers. We grip Michelob beer bottles. Some of us are dancing. Some of us are dancing the lust dance. The grin and flirt. The two-step closer to that brown eyed boy whose freckles glow like orange headlights in the October sky. I'll swing my bare leg over your motorcycle seat, zoom off without a helmet, and burn my thigh on the hot carburetor. Later you and I sit in another car, smoking a joint through a rubber mask to get a bigger hit. I'll pretend to pass out. Or maybe I do pass out. And then you turn toward me. And then all the lights crash out.

Prose Poem: Puma Perl

2009-10-01T12:17:00.005-04:00

Miss DiFalco

Miss DiFalco
(not yet thirty,
but spinsterish)
taught English to
seventh graders-
girls in black eye make-up
boys who wrote "fuck"
in their books…

Miss DiFalco,
principal’s daughter
a bear-like man
who scared everyone,
even the boys
drawing cocks
in library books,
even the girls
in ripped
black stockings...

Miss DiFalco,
perfume
light and flowery,
lavender, gardenia,
the girls smelled
of cigarettes,
tasted musky,
the boys greased
their hair

Miss DiFalco,
in her skirts too long,
her sensible shoes,
her crying eyes,
spoke clearly,
softly, in a refined
Brooklyn accent-
the students liked her
despite themselves.
they seemed to feel
the passionate woman
hiding behind her eyes.
on parent-teacher day,
six mothers wore pant suits,
three fathers squeezed
their bellies behind
student desk
the kids played
with their erasers,
tapped their feet-
everyone pretended
interest in verbs,
nouns, sentences.

after the lesson
Miss DiFalco
read a poem,
The Highwayman,
by Alfred Noyes
she had memorized it
"I'll come to thee by moonlight"
she recited, eyes burning
"look for me by moonlight"
she whispered, cheeks red
"Tlot-tlot in the frosty silence!
Tlot-tlot in the echoing night!"
she cried out!

the fathers leaned forward,
forgetting the desks
cutting into their guts,
the mothers narrowed their eyes,
the boys stared at her breasts,
the girls fixed their stockings-
finally, the highwayman
rode up to the old inn door;
whip in hand, he reached
for Bess, the landlord's daughter
the one with the long black hair-

Miss DiFalco
hissed those last lines,
closed her eyes,
clasped her hands,
willed her shaking body
to sit quietly again.
the class stood up
and applauded.
it was her finest moment.

#

A Ninth Grade Story

Monday morning:
Joey Carlucci turned Mr. Gatto's VW bug upside down.
His friend Butchie threw Mrs. Kimmelman’s desk out the window.
It landed on Mr. Camiel's 1962 two tone 4 door Dodge.
The cops found 82 unpaid parking tickets and red lace underwear under the seat.
Josephine Caruso passed a note to Richard Dorso.
It read in part, I love You. you can put it in Me today.
She signed my name with a lot of hearts and a postscript,
suggesting that he call me Huckleberry Pie.
Richard Dorso’s girlfriend Angela Palumbo came to my Spanish class.
Said she'd wait for me after school.
I told Joey Carlucci who liked me so he slapped her.
During lunch, he had a fight with Richard Dorso.
Angela and I smoked cigarettes and glared at each other,
twins in ripped black stockings and sneakers
She was 13, a year older than me cause I skipped 8th grade,
The cops arrived (again) before you could tell who won,
though Joey Carlucci was starting to look a little soft
around the eyes, like he was afraid of getting hurt.
Everyone who didn't run got JD cards and notes
asking their mothers to come up to school.
I rode the bus home alone except for Butchie,
who kept whispering "Huckleberry Pie" at me.
I knew I had to fight Josephine Caruso,
but all I wanted to do was to go home
Eat milk and cookies; the milk had turned sour
so I drank a cup of coffee and went back out,
looking for Josephine Caruso.

#

Naming the Wild Flowers
(original published in Journal of Heroin Love Songs, 6/08)

Ruth was long and blonde
She lived in the yellow house
up the road
She drove a pick-up
Painted houses, taught school
Baked pumpernickel
with secret ingredients
like mashed potatoes

She left the yellow house
to live with Allen on Bald Hill
His face was hidden
behind a bushy beard
Glasses and a hat
His head was usually down
He picked it up for Ruth
Turned out to be quite handsome

Wild flowers grew by the door
Ruth recited their names slowly,
like a child learning the alphabet
Fireweed Goldenrod
Spring Beauty
Starflower
Jack in the Pulpit
In a little girl's voice
She called out each name

Years later they came downtown
It was winter, she wore a pair of pants
around her neck, she had no scarf
After an hour, it was Allen's turn
She buried her face
in a stained cabled sweater
Her skin was as yellow as
the house up the road,
She spoke in a rasp, broken
teeth, cracked eyes
Burnt matches fell
from her pockets

They left hand in hand
Nicotine fingers entwined
She looked back at me once
The wind whipped her hair
Into her eyes, covered her face
She used to smell like lemons
I remembered her
Sitting on a country step
Could still hear her
In a child's voice
Naming the wild flowers

Prose Poem: William Doreski

2009-10-01T12:14:00.002-04:00

My Former Muse

Last night the weedy red hair of my former muse descended to veil from me the decent rooms, the decent wife, the decent town, and numb me into visions or versions of what might have been. Lying in a pasture in Vermont while the October wind opened our pores and looked in, we stroked each other raw. Perfect weather for the disaffected, the Taconics on their toes, every wrinkle brazen, every tree brisk and complex. She asked me to stay and find some menial job as bartender, perhaps, or bus boy in the restaurant where she waitressed, her hair knotted, her uniform too short to cover her sunburned thighs. I couldn't solve our lives so quickly. The soughing of the Battenkill below us sparked a language more inspired than mine. Trout leapt freely at the close of their long heartless season. Last night she returned to make up, but the silence has deepened and her red hair's going gray. Her children must be grown. Perhaps she married someone braver than me, perhaps she lives alone in that serene lack of motion that reminded me of sunning reptiles, her awkward features relaxed, her meatless scarred legs folded under her, every detail fixed in repose as she waits for me to abandon my worn old ego and with free will enter her own.

Prose Poem: Muriel Karr

2009-10-01T12:12:00.006-04:00

Consider This a Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there was a woman who had a problem. Her mother had died some years before, but she had been unable to bury her mother's body anywhere. Now she was determined to find a way to bury her mother.

As a result, she had a struggle. The sheriff said no, you cannot bury her in your yard. The cemetery said no, you are too late, it's against the rules. She couldn't find a mausoleum or a crypt. Even ashes wouldn't do.

So in the end, she ate her mother's body as the food she needed in order to continue - slim as a reed waving in the sweet summer wind on solstice eve.

Prose Poem: Todd Moore

2009-10-01T12:12:00.002-04:00

switchman

walking down the railroad tracks with a baseball bat and had a hunting knife stuck in his belt every once in awhile he'd stop at a freight car switched off on a side track and bang on the door with the ball bat when he saw me watching he said have you seen kansas city bob wears a stocking cap and has only one good eye the switchman said haven't seen him i replied i got his glass eye he said i wanna give it back then the switchman held out his hand he was holding a real eye and it was swimming in blood

Prose Poem: Catfish McDaris

2009-10-01T12:09:00.001-04:00

Ballad of Pete Best or the Short Life of Van Gogh's Ear

That night we were cooking
on stage, sizzling cool

The audience leaning forward
catching every nuance & syllable

I nodded for you to
do your prearranged
Zeppelin Hendrix style
fretless bass solo

You ignored our plan,
I looked up & a punk
had your guitar

You were standing in
the back of the room
grinning with your squeeze

Folks were getting crazy
when this dude got funky
I knew then, it was time
to hire Ringo.

#

Letter Bomb From a Pacifist Poet After Frijoles

If I could seal
a fart
in this envelope

It would be my
reply to your
form rejection slip

Unfortunately the
volume of rejects
I receive

Prevents a personal
reply to each &
every one I get.

The Photographs, The Filmy White Gauzy Curtains by Lyn Lifshin

2009-09-07T06:19:00.001-04:00

I’m flung back to 92 Rapple,
sheer curtains to the floor.
Silk spread, snow smooth,
palest ivory, wall to wall.
Bridal, exotic. How many
years was it, wondering, a
virgin still, a husband who
brought me tea in bed but
not what I longed for. In
the photograph, gauze
camouflages, lures. Soft
drams, no angles. And even
before the first lover came,
bottle of wine, Chateau y
Kempe hidden in the
closet, probably stolen from
some friend’s house in
Carmel. Months of letters,
photographs of him, one
of Dylan Thomas so I had
no idea what to expect
Fantasy was one thing. But to
have him: ex con, alcoholic,
stagger across the country
with a torn suitcase and
broken shoes. I had no idea
where to keep him and met
him at a motel up the street,
terrified there was something
wrong with me, that that
was why I was still a virgin.
By evening, I checked the
mirror, disappointed I didn’t
see a change in my face.
Nothing about the motel
room stays in memory. Or
when he started living in the
trees, sneaking in the back
door when my husband pulled
out in the Healy. That room,
so pure, so like a bridal chamber,
tho still pristine, the only color
not white in the room beside
the tiger cat, was his, my first
lover, and my body. After
love we’d read poetry all day.
Was it wine coolers or
scotch? He wanted drugs but
we had only nut meg. Like
silk draped over the railing
in the photo of this house,
my body fell over his. How
little I remember his smell,
how I felt with him inside me.
He was too big, he couldn’t
stay. He lit a match under my
window each night and I turned
the light on and off like a fire
fly signaling for a mate.
It was always a good story but
but it was getting so cold in
the woods he couldn’t stay.
The only place he can has been
for so many years
in poems

Call for Submissions

2009-08-31T09:50:00.005-04:00

The is now accepting submissions for a new theme issue: prose poem. Length to 500 words.

Please send to craigtheeditor [at] gmail [dot] com.

Deadline is September 30, 2009.

Unrest Level by Sarah Ahmad

2009-08-29T08:42:00.000-04:00

The missing and non-existent forces
bond and undilute
the poor leaders

Past to suffer in absolute

As corruption disjoints
and shapes the priorities

Lacking in cover up
Backed by neglect

Stepping away from the right direction
Manner deserving of the shortest praise

For life forms and bleeds an entity.

The Surreal Way by AJ Kaufmann

2009-08-29T08:14:00.000-04:00

Like plane wreckage
on a good breeze
white shift
phosphorescent rooms
towering curtains of smoke
deep cages
animal faces glowing
creeping above the cloud corridor
living fresh
enveloped streams of death
terrible fangs
zigzagging their ages
at the thresholds of beauty
be somewhere – die the surreal
way
dust to vigil to enemy
roaring like a refugee
when all shots
have failed

Silenced by Joan McNerney

2009-08-25T12:54:00.001-04:00

What is never spoken of, pushed down,
becomes mold crawling over hearts.
Strangling our voices, it scuttles through
corridors, tunneling, warping each day.
My body, this swollen thing carried by
legs too thin and crippled to uphold it.
Pushed down, tightly clamped in now,
full of pain, gasping for each breath.

Two by Lyn Lifshin

2009-08-22T11:49:00.000-04:00

WHEN THERE ARE MARIACHIS

when breakfast and lunch
are martinis. When
sheets smell of rose,
Bulgarian rose, Tuber
rose, that dark rose
in a bottle on my dresser,
musky as skin. When
it’s bolero or rumba.
When we leave the
room, and there is no
cat puke to clean up,
no terror of what’s
ahead. When you hold
me, should you hold me

#

THE MAD GIRL FEELS HIM IN HER FINGERS, HER SKIN

that almost pain chill,
a needle in her arm.
If you haven’t felt
it you don’t know
her. She wants more
and more. Wants
to audition for
flamenco at 2 AM
in a sketchy
part of town,
would break up
your family if she
could but only
for the lava
inside her. “Foxy
Lady” they yelled
at Muscle Beach.
Some days they
still do. What she
aches for is elusive
as a man made
of snow. Her first
poems had that
image in them. What
was intoxicating
and then melting
quickly, snow
flaked beauty, there
and then not. Now
only she warms
the place filled by
her body. All
she is missing and
starved for is
what she
can’t have

Two by Joseph Goosey

2009-08-22T08:28:00.003-04:00

A CAKED UP CORPSE DOUSED IN PEARLS

You eat oysters don't you?
Where do you shove them?
Into your ears?
What are you? An elf?
I wanted to marry an elf once
but she hacked off
my left foot and fed it
to the nearest
pond.

#

A HARDLY COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF IDEAS FOR SHORT STORIES WHICH I LACK THE CAPACITY TO CREATE

1. Boy eats too many sleeping pills, is sent to mental ward of a Tampa
hospital where he befriends a man who cannot control his bowels. They
play checkers.

2. Low level employee at Hershey's Inc. falls into vat of chocolate.
He is killed instantly by a propeller that is used to smooth the
chocolate. This inspires a rash of employees to realize their own
desire for expiration and jump into the vat. Some of them are not
killed instantly by the propeller.

3. Deformed man picks up a deaf girl at a bar. Realizes he can say
extremely foul shit to deaf girls during sex. The sex talk evolves
into lengthy monologues regarding his fear of emotional and physical
abandonment.

4. Man who cannot control his bladder meets the same man from story #1 who cannot control his bowels at a bus stop. They play checkers.

Three by John Sweet

2009-08-07T07:09:00.002-04:00

after the age of giants

And this is not nothing, this sky, these
clouds, these hills, and it’s not the
whole story because nothing ever is,
but listen. Distance is an important thing.
Forty feet from the bridge to the tracks
below. 100 miles between the woman’s
body and her husband’s faith. And have
you ever tried defining yourself by
something other than sorrow or fear?
Will you crawl from lover to lover with
nothing to offer but fading bruises
and the promise of more?

It’s okay to pause before you answer,
to consider, to weight your options.
It’s okay to accept the fact that we’ve
never really meant anything to each other.
This is why the sunlight casts shadows.
Why time only moves in one direction.
The moment arrives one hundred
million times a day, and then it passes.
The song is forgotten. I wanted to
sing it to you, but you were married.
You were crying. It was a sound
just like any other.

#

bird trapped in a wall

flutter of wings like
god’s fading heartbeat,
like the shadows of
disappeared lovers, and
there is all the time you
waste while yr still alive
and then there is the
moment you die

there is the shape yr
bones will make when
laid out in the
desert sand

there is joy, even in
the face of sorrow

#

the din

trees in the haze, shimmer
of leaves, fist of the sun in a
bottomless white sky

don’t ask for forgiveness

don’t offer it

all of these houses will fall
down, given enough time,
and all of the poets you
hate will grow old and die

all of their mediocre poems
will be forgotten

they will be just like you

iTitType by iDrew

2009-08-01T07:50:00.000-04:00

in the pub
i watched this bloke just stare at my tits
wouldn’t mind so much if he was good looking
or buff but he was just some sad perve
with a beer gut i said oi mate getting an eyeful
he said what else are they for
szxdxc ..l;k;po
i can type with them for a start
and they can get me free drinks from deluded losers
talented girl he said can i buy you a smirnoff ice?

Winter Jogger Without Life Jacket by Kyle Hemmings

2009-08-01T07:39:00.002-04:00

She can no longer run. In the slosh of side streets,
she leaves crooked tracks in the dirty snow. Her feet are sinking tug boats.
Jutting blindly off a curb, she is hit by a car.
Writhing in the street, she moans more from exhaustion than from pain.
She is able to crawl. People gather around to offer help.
She waves them away. In the distance, an ambulance siren wails.
She works back towards her apartment, each step the energy of a lifetime.
She is crawling back to her mother. But her mother is not there, has vanished,
an invisible angel over the whitewalls, the graffiti of the city.
In the kitchen, she struggles to stand.
There is a letter on the table. It reads:
You have won your race not because you came in first
or second or third, but because you finished.
She doesn’t read the rest of it.
Groping towards the sink, she wants a glass of water.
It's all she wants.
She collapses.

Moonless Sky by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

2009-08-01T07:33:00.000-04:00

It is dark out.
The moonless sky
is without comment.

I talk to it
about its silence.

It is quiet.
I talk about
the sky without eyes.

At night the moon
is the eye in the sky.
In the dark
the moonless sky
is without sight.

Two by Timothy Raymond

2009-08-01T07:29:00.001-04:00

How to Make Do

Paint one of the rooms red, a deep red like wine. Wander there, in and out, when you can no longer hear the children from next door laughing. Feel like you’re inside of someone else. You want a house with character, but you have to make do with what you have.

Peel apples and put the skin in the garbage disposal. Run it a few times until the kitchen smells like red delicious. You put a fan in there to spread the smell into the other rooms of the house. On your errands across town, sit in the car without the radio. Sit like you’re pretty. Sit like when you were a girl. Imagine that there are people coming to see you at your house when you’re away. Believe it as best as you can. Drive to the bookstore and pretend the clerks behind the counter are gossiping about you.

You go home with the ice cream cone that you bought. Love the vanilla. Try to save it for when you get inside. Turn the air-conditioner on in the car to avoid melting the ice cream.

Take it outside to the back porch after you arrive at home. Sit in a lawn chair while you wait for the children next door to go into their backyard to play croquet. Hope that they come soon.

Watch the sky as you wait. Watch it until it turns the color of the cat you lost when you were seven.

#

She Worries

She takes a pill when she worries. But then she worries when she has stopped worrying. That is, she worries that she is not the kind of person to worry over important things in her life. In her mind, people who worry are maybe just on top of things.

So she doesn't take the pill the next time she worries, only to find that she is weary with her worry.

Pandora of Montserrat Moves Out of the Attic and Into Another House by Michael H. Brownstein

2009-07-10T09:41:00.001-04:00

The voice you hear does not belong to God,
the old house gray oak, moist and stingy.
Petty thieves burrow in through holes in the wood,
slipshod knots in the grain and the domoviye
smuggled in from the old country hibernates
deep within cracks in the foundation.
Once you saw the image of the Virgin Mary
near the ceiling, wet-stained and red.
This week you bathe in fresh moonlight,
study the flaws in the great cottonwood
thick with carrion left by wandering crows.
You lost one tooth after every live birth
and named your last born Superstar.
The last time you woke him, he said, “Mama,
I’m tired. Let me settle back into sleep.”

fucking by Todd Moore

2009-07-10T09:34:00.001-04:00

fucking

around w/a
45 auto
while larry
sez kid
kid but i’m
not listening
because
i like the
feel of the
hammer
spur digging
into my
thumb kid
i can letcha
have it
cheap i’m
aiming at
my reflec
tion in the
mirror first
world war
vintage &
it still works
fine a
thousand
bucks gets
you the his
tory of death
larry sez
palming his
cigaret my
smile lights
the gun
barrel i in
vented the
history of
death now
all i wanna
do is conjure
the action

burning the by Todd Moore

2009-06-29T09:37:00.001-04:00

burning the

crow
folsom shot
w/the 45
auto the
recoil made
his right
hand dance
across a
dry light
ning sky
then he
splashed
the wings
w/lighter
fluid &
got a hot
fire going
before
sitting cross
legged in
the weeds
i love the
way the
fire pops
its guts
folsom sd
it’s the
last time
the crow
gets to
sing

Two by David Lawrence

2009-06-24T10:45:00.000-04:00

TURTLE SOUP

The turtle crawls from the soup but leaves a reminder
Of its flavor.
I am gargling my spoon,
Trying to taste the flying saucer of the meat.
I come back to my disinheritance to find out where
My talents went.
Sometimes life inverts itself and you can’t get into
Its shell.
If I could live a hundred years
I’d be at home in the Galapagos Islands.
I go deep sea diving to find the bubbles in my head.
I hear the breathing of the soup in the turtle.
I drop a cucumber in my bowl to discover a crunch.

#

FISH AND FOOTBALL

Whatever you’ve seen has been forgotten mostly
But on the large part and the mainsail
You are heading away from shore to a disappearing
Port,
A home for Bonita fish
And marlin.
Everything that is going is gone and what remains
Is less than what you wished it would be.
You couldn’t contain life
In your handshake with yourself or your greeting
To your innuendos.
If I could get a hold of you I would bring you back
To this interception,
Carry the ball up field past the linebackers
And end up at the hot dog stand rewarding my turn.

Insecurities by Ivan Brkaric

2009-06-22T12:22:00.000-04:00

Not too long ago she whipped out a purple dildo.

It was the size of my forearm and as thick as a soda can.

She said it would spice up our sex life.

I didn’t get it though!

I would have preferred a much smaller dildo than my own penis.

But who’s got the time for insecurities?

Right?

Mr. Flip as a Blackbox by Kristine Ong Muslim

2009-06-22T12:21:00.001-04:00

The trick is to stay alive. But most days, there are no choices left.

Mr. Flip is now the only survivor after the crash. A metal box of recorded frequencies. There is no lid to this box, no flaps that can open upwards. All tongue and no lips makes Mr. Flip a good mimic. If he can only stand up, if he can only shapeshift his way out of his natural boxlike configuration, then he will walk away from this carnage of smoke and twisted metal. He will wander until he will reach a town, perhaps, a roadside where he can hitch a ride home.

By sundown, Mr. Flip will have learned to ignore the noise. He will have his own feet to tread on the bones of sparrows, of roadkill grit. How they crackle like the broken fingerbones of sickly girls, their unrehearsed prayers turning into sighs.

The Earth Is Exploding Where Lawrence of Arabia Once Slept by Doug Draime

2009-06-22T11:22:00.001-04:00

where he fought
and fornicated

where he turned
his heart to blowing sand

blood lust
running through

his aristocratic veins

his blue eyes full of
the murderous

future

Morning Glory by Mercedes M. Yardley

2009-06-13T07:17:00.002-04:00

She was exquisite, a tiny thing with broken hands and a smile like a thunderstorm. He was sharp and dapper with diamond chip eyes and knives sewn into the lining of his coat. He took her shattered fingers and kissed each one. They firmed and smoothed, green vines wrapping themselves around the healing bone. Her eyes were morning glories and guillotines and butterflies.

EDIT (6/17/09): I just received word from Mercedes that this piece will also be appearing in the University of Maine's Binnacle, both in print and online. You can learn more about Binnacle here.

Family Vacation by Kimberly E. Ruth

2009-06-11T11:05:00.000-04:00

Droplets the size of tonsils,

like the child gnawing on the turkey
leg on a stick

on a bone,
it seemed.

I’ve seen scenes like this before,
in movies.

Old movies.
Similar figures

protected by garbage bags
and camouflage hats

treading through rain
forests and thick

air.

People wait in lines for food;
an eight dollar hotdog

and a hat with animal ears.

Two by Duane Locke

2009-06-08T22:48:00.001-04:00

WE NEED TO BE IGNORANT OF WHAT
WE ARE LOOKING FOR, IF WE
ARE GOING TO FIND TRUTH

Gowns, colored like Fra Angelico colors brushed
On San Marco cell walls, near
The waist-high desk with the brown varnish
Worn to pinkness of raw wood
By brown cassock-covered elbows
Of Savnarola, gowns

Covering black body-tight body stocking
With skeleton bones, blazing white,
Painted on the black,
Gowns wore by grumbling girls,
Anticipating the monotony of rehearsal.

One girl, absconded, thumbed a ride to a roadhouse.

All the girls disdained to act in allegories
Proclaiming lofty things. It was a city
Where all dogs were chained to steel leaning sticks.
There was the required anteroom piano practice
During the backroom adult-only, x-rated, cocktail hours.

When the obligation fulfilled, the girls
Would undon their gowns, put on overalls,
And paint their eyelids indigo, paint
Their lips the white of white geraniums.

#

PAVANES AMONG POVERTY

A pavane, commotion in corporeal corridors,
Otherwise a community, carved monumental
Contours, liquid in audible accents of silence.

Together, we are alive in our solitarinesses,
Our solitudes, our occurrents, existences
Have become singularities and alterities.

We have leaped over the fence of the infinite,
Transformed to be taciturn orators of the finite.
We, now aliens among alienations, freed.

We were untouched by their stake fires,
Although burned as was Bruno,
We sparkle like ashes once stars.