Monthly Archives: April 2018

“Internal Exile” by Diane G. Martin,

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          “…we have no hope and yet
          we live in longing.”

                     Inferno, Dante

I’ve been pressed between the pages
of a heavy book, a keepsake
to be rediscovered one fine
day, yellow, brittle, print-stained—
a sentimental talisman.

I’m so close to every line;
indeed, they are on me engraved.
Exquisite shapes keep me awake,
though once lofty, once plain thoughts have
blurred, have rubbed their meanings away.

The lack of air is thick with them—
clouds of locusts on a rampage—
these words elbowing each other
These worlds of words, all alien.
I distrust them–black, banal worn.

Yet it’s not for nothing I’m named
Diana.  For now, I bide my
hours quietly, lie warily
between famed leaves and string my bow.
Somehow, I’ll fly to the dark wood.

—

Diane G. Martin, Russian literature specialist, Willamette University graduate, has published work in numerous literary journals including New London Writers, Vine Leaves Literary Review, Poetry Circle, Open: JAL, Pentimento, Twisted Vine Leaves, The Examined Life, Wordgathering, Dodging the Rain, Antiphon, Dark Ink, Gyroscope, Poor Yorick, Rhino, Conclave, Slipstream, and Stonecoast Review.

 

 

“Notes in the Night” by Judith Bader Jones

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A summer breeze, sheer
as bedroom curtains, floats
through a screened window
and joins us in our double bed.

Evening slows the rhythm
of your beating heart when I rest
against your chest and nighttime music
becomes a cover for body pain and sorrow.

Livin’ in this murky world – the blues
dilutes our hurts while brush-stroke lyrics,
sung by survivors, saves souls as we fall
asleep holding onto each other.

—

Judith Bader Jones, a poet in Fairway, Kansas, has recent publications in  CHEST- The American College of Chest Physicians, Nostalgia and i-70 Review. She is an avid organic gardener and bird photographer.

 

“Sleeping in Bed Together” by John Grey

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You’re from a world where seasons never varied their routine
and construction workers waved from beams on high
and a revelation could be as simple
as a bucking trout pulled from a stream.

And now you’re with a woman, in a bed
her body barely a shiver away from yours,
suddenly aware of how little touch is needed to identify the other
while always imagining the worst that lies in store for you.

You got from hatching to imago
with the usual helpings of slime and ooze,
to where you’re heel to heel with the desired one,
and yet still can be startled by such close companionship.

You’re from a place where so little flesh went into the making of you.
And here being fully grown is not something you find comforting,
Yet from lack of light, a strange cadence emerges.
low-breathing, low-flying beings navigating their way through sleep.

—

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Examined Life Journal, Studio One and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.  

 

 

 

 

“as dandelions popped” by Nanette Rayman

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Tonight, from a distance, I saw my real life
smiling and walking across the avenue with bells
on, a sound sweet—for her—like the birds chirping
at the last moment of Layla. And without a sound
the blue-green brush strokes of sad altostratus
clouds crosshatched the whole sky. A cassowary
lost its quillish feathers in New Guinea, feet left
to kick anyone in its path and a fortune-teller
heavy with turquoise in a long flowing skirt looked
at me for a long moment. On the other side
of the Atlantic,  the Isle of Hebrides took
on sun and people cried, weathered houses
tilting in the wind, and eyes hooded by hands
ready to caress wives and husbands as I sat
down floppily on an old bench as dandelions
popped, as pink pansies blossomed fuchsia,
resigned and overwhelmed as the human soul.

—

Nanette Rayman, author of Shana Linda, Pretty Pretty and Project: Butterflies—Foothills Publishing. Winner of the Glass Woman Prize, included in Best of the Net 2007, DZANC Best of the Web 2010 is published in Stirring’s Steamiest Six, featured in Up the Staircase Quarterly. Other publications include: Sugar House Review, Worcester Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Little Rose Magazine, Rain, Poetry & Disaster Society, Pedestal, DMQ, carte blanche, Oranges & Sardines, Sundog, and Melusine. 

“Post-” by Joshua Allen

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Swamp grass and muck rot
shelter a vibrant community.

Brown-speckled wren eggs crack
in six-pack nests beneath

black bag tarpaulins.
Aluminum can abodes dwell

 on shaded confetti lawns.
Insects scurry on tire tread highways;

 reptiles retire to Coke bottle brothels.
Father says, the lost architecture is the most tragic part.

Glossy magazines woven into webs
bridge trees as a canopy

of dates and events. The focused sun
illuminates the particular histories

we have tried to leave behind
during our marsh walk.

Instead, we think of the cooking fire,
the roasting meat, the hum of voices,

 which quiet as we approach, guns drawn.

—

Joshua Allen is a somewhat wayward soul who is soon to be mercilessly ejected from Indiana University Bloomington into the larger world. He has been published in Gravel, Origami Journal, Lime Hawk, Tributaries (forthcoming), and The Long Island Literary Journal (forthcoming). 

In the Quiet of Drought the Monarchs Perish by Jeff Burt

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The grass keeps on dying
but never finishes, and what to bury
dead ground in never comes up.
A shovel turns, as if it’s restless.

The soil warms and earthworms
defect for a more conservative soil,
the communizing surface effect lost
when one has no soothing slide.

Beetles that burrow for the loss
of their virginity keep pushing dirt
out of the holes and when sex strikes
it is more of a match on a sandpaper strip

than a moist bed of coupling.
What does it matter—the male dies,
the female swells and spawns,
exits weary to become prey for jays.

All dries, dies, withers.
All the warbling birds
and accompanying zithers
of crickets and bees have throats

and wings too thin to sing.
My mouth tastes the dust
the scraping rake brings up.
I no longer water.

—

Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, with his wife and marauding bands of wild turkeys that scare trucks and cobble and gobble everything at their feet. He won the Cold Mountain Review Poetry Prize in 2017.

 

“Porch” by Martina Reisz Newberry

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We cast curses at the moon,
watch its face travel over     then behind     clouds,
then come to the fore
as if beckoned
when it most certainly was not.
Booze and blackberries on the front porch
and the cries of dead beasts and warriors out there.

Imagine it                     Hold it in your head
as you do song lyrics and prayers.
The strange scents of late nights
call us to remember our weaknesses
and the ill will we’ve encountered in others.
We talk of these things     bring them closer.

And oh the madness of this porch        how it dares to receive
our complaints and our compliances             how it
rests under our flip-flops and naked toes     how it
shifts under spilled sweet tea     and dripped foam
off cans of Bud Light

Does it make you grin that I’ve said this?

So, the moon hovers and we here below
pull it over us, imagine it soft when            in truth
it’s dense as a mango dum dum.

Inside, we look for rest knowing our mendacity
could pull down the stars                  knowing our joys
are simple masks for grudges
the way they jibe

My God                     The way we consume bitterness
fill our plates, pour on gravies
and sauces of fear and then
dare to sleep on that repletion.

—

Martina Reisz Newberry’s recent books: NEVER COMPLETELY AWAKE (Deerbrook Editions), and TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME (Unsolicited Press).Widely published, she was awarded residencies at Yaddo Colony for the Arts, Djerassi Colony for the Arts, and Anderson Center for Disciplinary Arts.

Martina lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Brian.

“Absence by Inference” by Duane L. Herrmann

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A row of cedar trees
native to the plains
and nearly indestructible,
with a shed behind,
old, ruined,
indicate the absence
of a home
once in the space
the trees protected.
What happened
to this farm?
The missing family?
The tragedy afflicted
on their lives?
And, the children?
What did they feel,
uprooted, scattered,
with the wind?

—

Duane L. Herrmann is a survivor who lived to tell; a prairie poet with a global conscience.  Recipient of the Robert Hayden Poetry Fellowship, he is published in print and online in several languages and various countries. His collections of poetry include: Prairies of Possibilities, Ichnographical:173 and Praise the King of Glory.

“Wanting” by Diana Raab

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Wanting
I
Rainbow

The rain trickles
down my paned window
as I stand up to hunt the sky
for the stripes of my childhood.
The more I want to touch
that rainbow, the more it drifts away.

II

Persuasion

When you wonder about
what you want anew
try persuading yourself
and the answer will come to you.

III

Wishing Well

Yesterday I released a penny
in that deepest tunnel
of darkness, crossing my fingers
and begging for wellness.

—

Diana Raab, Ph.D. is an award-winning poet, memoirist, blogger, essayist and speaker.  Her book, “Writing for Bliss: A Seven-Step Plan for Telling Your Story and Transforming Your Life” was published in 2017.  Raab is a regular blogger for Psychology Today, Huff50 (The Huffington Post), and PsychAlive. More at dianaraab.com.

 

“Geode” by Beth Politsch

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The news of your cancer
began a fracture – a small crack
we thought could be patched.

But then it crept outward into the multicolored expanse of time
and spread gray
outward from its edges
like the matte surface of a stone.

I’ve tried drinking
to stop my mind
from trudging
along that deepening fissure
that spans from month one of your illness
to month twenty when you died.

But I never manage to dull the sharp edges
of your truths:

You were too young and too kind
and so imperfect
and complicated
on your surface
that you were everyone’s favorite
sister and friend.

The pain is unstoppable now,
and in this strange middle phase
of my life, I have accepted it
as necessary.

Now I am walking with purpose
to break the gray veil
of your sickness.
I conjure spikes
from my heels
and push them down into the darkness.

I fall to my knees
and my hands become pick-axes.
I claw into the fear until it smashes open,
exposing its crystal center.

And this is where I find you:

In this precious cache
of mineralized memories
you sparkle with facets
both jagged and smooth,
your light and color

reflecting
into all dimensions.

—

Beth Politsch is a storyteller, poet and copywriter based in Lawrence, Kansas. She currently creates content for Hyland Software and writes children’s books and poetry in her free time.

 

“At Nineteen” by John Sierpinski

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On a Monday, July morning, Julian Whittaker
(at nineteen) works high up on a ladder, cleaning
fluorescent light fixtures in the English lecture
hall. He can use the money for the start of the fall
semester. He wipes dust, and then black soot off
the white covers. Mike Kessler cleans, too. He

tells Julian, “I’ve just been released from the county
psych ward, but I’m okay now. I’m studying
Mandarin.” To Julian, Mike appears unbalanced,
the shaky ladder, his exophthalmic eyes, the tick
of his right cheek. Another student, Richard
Longwell, has come to dust. He carries a boom

box the size of a small suitcase. At the sound
of the manic beat, Julian notices that Mike and Richard
dust faster. Then Richard declares, “It’s break time!”
and turns the lights off and the volume up. Distorted
guitars splay, plugged in to simple chords. To Julian,
it is too much. He thinks about how he has lost his

beloved Renee—she has walked away. He feels,
in the words of Pink Floyd, “comfortably numb.”
He drowns another soaped rag, wrings it out by touch
in the dark, and lets the water drip down his pant leg.
He listens to Mike tell Richard, “Turn that damn box
down.” Then Mike says, “You know, I had sex with

one of the other patients.” Richard says, “When I
dropped acid, last night, my entire body glowed. Just
think about it, my veins pumped light.” “Look man,
I don’t want to think about your drug-fueled shit,”
Mike says. And Julian, he doesn’t say anything at all.

—

John Sierpinski studies poetry at the Vest Conservatory for Writers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has recently published in California Quarterly, Curbside Splendor, North Coast Review, and Indiana Voice Journal. He has been nominated for a 2013 Pushcart Prize. He has currently completed a collection.

 

 

“Nook” by Hannah Rousselot

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The closet is small enough
that when I go in with my book
my body is compressed on all sides.

I lean the pillow I brought
against the thin wood.
The flashlight makes the shadows
stronger, but now I can read about

a girl who escapes and saves the world.

I have nothing to escape from
except the toxic cloud
that my parents created downstairs.

I have nothing to save except
my own bloody fingernails, from myself.

—

Hannah Rousselot is a queer DC based poet. She has been writing poetry since she could hold a pencil and has always used poems as a way to get in touch with her emotions. She writes poetry about the wounds that are still open, but healing, since her childhood and the death of her first love. Her work has appeared in Voices and Visions magazine, PanoplyZine, and Parentheses Magazine. In addition to writing poetry, Hannah Rousselot is also an elementary school teacher. She teaches a poetry unit every January, and nothing brings her more joy than seeing the amazing poems that children can create.

“Mermaid Suicide” by Danielle Wong

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My skin ripens—
a nutty hazel canopy of flesh.
Cocoa dust and tawny
muscle roasting, hot
fire beneath the relentless

Sun. My private vessel,
suffused with color and
plagued by a vain
saturation, but draped
in Vogue and saintly couture.

The corrosion has
already begun—
hot blood coursing
through precious skin and
brackish waves claiming me
as their own.

To drown like this,
I think, would be quite
convenient.
To wither away,
via sun and
decay. Ugly moths and

fireflies are the only
inhabitants of the corroded
corpse where I once dwelled.

Has there ever been
such a simple decline—
an ending more languid than this?

—

Danielle Wong is an emerging author living in San Francisco. Her debut novel, Swearing Off Stars, was published in October. Her work has also appeared on several websites, including Harper’s Bazaar, The Huffington Post, and USA Today. Beyond writing and reading, Danielle loves traveling, running, and watching old movies.

“Pachyderm” by Toti O’Brien

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What makes baby irresistible
is candid decrepitude
held so gracefully.

Wrinkled and sagged
a zillion-year-old skin
stacked on its tiny skeleton

yet clear of all attitude
only wisdom
that of pretending none.

Little beast, born a centenarian
but without a lament
totters by with unsteady majesty.

Such conspicuous fragility
grizzled innocence
in its meek stare.

Eyes black corals
buried by timeless oceans
submerged by rippling sand.

—

Toti O’Brien is the Italian Accordionist with the Irish Last Name. She was born in Rome then moved to Los Angeles, where she makes a living as a self-employed artist, performing musician and professional dancer. Her work has most recently appeared in DIN Magazine, Panoplyzine, Courtship of Wind, and Colorado Boulevard.

 

 

“White Crow” by Yuan Changming

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Perching long in each human heart
Is a white crow that no one has
Ever seen, but everyone longs
To be

Always ready
To fly out, hoping to bring back
A glistening seed or a colorful feather
As if determined to festoon its nest

—

Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan and hosts Happy Yangsheng in Vancouver; credits include ten Pushcart nominations, seven chapbooks, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), Best New PoemsOn Line, Threepenny Review and 1,389 others across 41 countries.