Monthly Archives: June 2016

Take the Apple by Michelle Holland

1 Reply

Drag out books with dog-eared pages, find thatIMG_0924
quote to make some sense of Adam and Eve,
the doctrine of apple trees and the real
story of knowledge. Take the apple not
just to eat, but cast the seeds and make sure
to spread them wide along the paths. Seek out
that birdsong found on an ipod matching
the birdsong from the lush cottonwood down
by the ditch, to know a Bullock’s Oriole.
Notice the canary-yellow bottom
of a brilliant white sego lily
balanced on its slender stalk. Truth rises
in spits and starts, our own bird call, a trill
of thought where the hummingbirds whirr and dive.

—

Michelle Holland has two collections of poetry, “Event Horizon,” included in The Sound a Raven Makes, (Tres Chicas Press) \ New Mexico Book Award winner 2009, and Chaos Theory, (Sin Fronteras Press).  She is co-poetry editor of the Sin Fronteras Journal, and treasurer of the New Mexico Literary Arts Board.

The Road to Heaven by D.G. Geis

Leave a reply

Unlike the Road to Hell,IMG_0907
The Road to Heaven is paved
With many things.

Consider sparrows. They
Make excellent base material
And are seldom missed.

And what about the Rabbis of
Treblinka? Their prayers ascend
Like incense. And ash packs well.

Throw in a few starving children
(Africans of course) and while you’re
At it, an aid worker or two.

And dogs beaten especially
For television. Show the dogs
With large eyes pleading

For humanity, praying for the Dog
Of Dogs to show his growling face,
And from you, for ten dollars a month.

Show the living room of the Good Shepherd
Counting sheep on his 70 inch wafer-thin TV,
Reclining in a Lazy Boy, kicking back with a

Cold one, doing what Good Shepherds
Always do. Taking a well deserved break
From deciding who gets sheared

and who gets slaughtered.

—

D.G. Geis lives in Houston, Texas. He has degrees from the University of Houston (B.A. English) and California State University (M.A. Philosophy).  He will be featured in a forthcoming Tupelo Press chapbook anthologizing  9 New Poets and is winner of Blue Bonnet Review‘s Fall 2015 Poetry Contest.

Nightscape by Sharon Scholl

Leave a reply

When you reflect on darkness,
that it doesn’t thrust forward
but shrinks to secret corners,

when you see how birds
fold languidly into it, cheeping
softly in their feathers,

the way cats’ eyes expand, yellow
pupils taking furry draughts
of its enticing blackness,

how it spreads its viscous skirts
over jeweled windows and ruinous
gutters, over kisses and slaps,

washing over feasts and graves,
leaving every absence filled,
every sorrow lost to dreams,

it is oddly understandable
why the weary old, the damaged
do so calmly come to death.
—

Sharon Scholl is professor emerita from Jacksonville University where she taught the western  humanities courses and non-western studies (Africa, Japan).  Her chapbook, Summer’s Child, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.  Single poems appear currently in Adanna, Caesura, and Kalyna Language Press.  A musician/composer, she maintains a website that gives away free music to small choirs. She lives in Atlantic beach Fl.

In My Story by Chella Courington

2 Replies

Peter all in blueDSCN3237
flies from Mr. McGregor
drops one shoe in cabbage

and forfeits his jacket
slipping under the gate.
My hero outwits this farmer.

In my story
Peter finds me
with a pink suitcase.

But don’t mistake us
no Alice and Mad Hatter
no Grace and White Rabbit.

We’re Chella and Peter
in a wood at dusk
far from family noise.

He tells me his grandfather
sacrificed his own tail
to save Otter.

I confess
my father shoots otter
and bruises me.

I say
some pain is worse
than dying.

Peter takes my hand
under the harvest moon
and stars float downstream.

—

Chella Courington is the author of three poetry and three flash fiction chapbooks. Her poetry and stories appear in numerous anthologies and journals including SmokeLong Quarterly, Nano Fiction, and The Collagist. Her recent novella, The Somewhat Sad Tale of the Pitcher and the Crow, is available at Amazon.

Sonrise by hakim bellamy

Leave a reply

In the center of this chest, is a solar system
hovering above an empty plexus because
someone left the light on. When the the stardust
in these veins burn out, that Blackhole will find
his way home and thank me for naming him
after a wish. Terrified by the sound of his own vacuum,
and everything else I left behind. Cursing me,
beneath his beating breath, for all this space to fill
and the unnecessary dying of the chakra.

—

Hakim Bellamy became the inaugural poet laureate of Albuquerque on April 14th, 2012, at age 33. He’s the son of a preacher man (and a praying woman). His mother gave him his first book of poetry as a teen, a volume by Khalil Gibran. Many poems later, Bellamy has been on two national champion poetry slam teams, won collegiate and city poetry slam championships, and has been published in numerous anthologies, as well as AlterNet, Truthout and Counterpunch. He was featured on the nationally syndicated Tavis Smiley Radio Show and has had his work displayed in inner-city buses. A musician, actor, journalist, playwright and community organizer, Bellamy has also received an honorable mention for the Paul Bartlett Ré Peace Prize at the University of New Mexico and the Emerging Creative Bravos Award. His first collection of poetry, SWEAR, won the Tillie Olson Creative Writing Award from the Working Class Studies Association. Bellamy is the founder and president of Beyond Poetry LLC. For more information on the author, please visit www.hakimbe.com.