Death

Death

I dreamed of death the other night
mournful and gut wrenching
more emotion and true fright
than I ever felt
over the subject
in real life.
Kept saying, if I could only
convince myself of an afterlife
a chance to reunite
then I could continue
with faith
and it would be alright
Yet I did not have any.
I awoke with emotions still fresh
afraid to contact anyone
and discover bad news.
Later, my mother called
A relief!
"What day did your brother Johnny die?" I asked her
"Today" she replied.
So weird, he died before I was ever born
yet together we re-experienced his loss
just hours before dawn.

--Madrea Marie currently trying to get her head back on straight after taking a year of Psych courses. She is a married mother of several young kids, and enjoys art, writing, and poetry in her free time.

NICU

NICU

You were the best poet I heard.

It was an honour to be near you
And be taught by you. You need three things
To live well: a good heart, a trained mind, and
A gut paved with metal.

Nicu, today I sing about you again.

Nobody else could turn sixty years
Of suffering
Into humour.
--This poem is from The Wooden Tongue Speaks, by Bogdan Tiganov, soon to be published by Honest Publishing.

The Doozer

The Doozer

She looked and sounded

like Cotterpin Doozer

from Fraggle Rock

and had about one tenth

of the sex appeal,

and not just because I

used to screw puppets

all the time when I was

a teenager, because I did,

even the Charlie McCarthy one,

and Lambchop,

and Lester,

and Miss Henrietta Pussycat.

Okay, I didn’t have

Miss Henrietta Pussycat,

but I did sometimes

fantasize I was with her

when I was doing Charlie.

--Michael Frissore has a chapbook called Poetry is Dead (Coatlism, 2009) and a blog called michaelfrissore.blogspot.com. His writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Dzanc Books' "Best of the Web" anthology, and has appeared most recently in Jersey Devil Press, Pulp Metal Magazine, Houston Literary Review, Catalonian Review, and elsewhere. Mike grew up in Massachusetts and lives in Oro Valley, Arizona with his wife and son.

BOUGHT A HOUSE

BOUGHT A HOUSE

Bought another house
Closer to the river
Where I can see the peasants
Drown.

God bless them…

Bought another villa
Next to the other one
And right next door to the
President.

He’s a laugh and a
Half…

Looking to buy a palace
Beneath the heavens
Where the only way is
Down.

(Don’t be jealous,
Come and visit,
Bring gifts,
Credit cards, loans,
Real good deals.)

Will find the money
To renovate my homes,
My sweet sweet homes,
Terrible,
Yes,
But it’s so hard being poor,
It is it really is
Impossible to get by
Oh my poor poor children:
Devastating.
And
You’ll never know
The pain, the true true pain
Of living with only
Four homes, three cars and
Two vineyards, four dogs,
Three cats, two cockatoos
And a wife.

--This poem is from The Wooden Tongue Speaks, by Bogdan Tiganov, soon to be published by Honest Publishing.

THE GATEKEEPER

THE GATEKEEPER

I am the samurai
Beast inside your purity
Whispered the drunken
Gatekeeper
And you, you
Will eat yourselves
Like wild dogs.

The dead survive
Amongst the living
And you’d better
Listen and listen hard
At the head of
A carcass or
Head of an angel.

--This poem is from The Wooden Tongue Speaks, by Bogdan Tiganov, soon to be published by Honest Publishing.

quoteABLE

"You don't have a personality... You have an entourage." --John Ney Rieber

Abolishing Death

Abolishing Death

The river unfurls like a shroud,
now my drowned wear you always
then we will be married.
Red water gives a monstrous birth,
abolishing death
as creatures devour our gifted ash.
The chaotic night has withdrawn
into arms of the purple robed sun
stretched infinite in sky and fire.
I will return into you.

--John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky. His chapbooks, Prominences and Sinking of the Cloth, appeared from Flutter Press and Set Apart Before the World Was Made appeared from Calliope Nerve Media.  Full of Crow published his ebook, The Feathered Masks. His work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best of the Web.

A Restless Facing

A Restless Facing

The crow flies the darkness without wings,
the sun whitened its face and departed the trees
like a red king wed celestial in lion blood.
I am unground from the earth,
burned like the bird flamed from cliffs of saltpeter.
Beneath the expanding tents I searched for words
to purify myself, but you did not appear.
In a dream I saw you garbed like an aurora queen
poised on a throne in the eye of the crow.
Into a restless facing of lords
we are summoned by prayer,
though I still warp on the shores of your agony.

--John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky. His chapbooks, Prominences and Sinking of the Cloth, appeared from Flutter Press and Set Apart Before the World Was Made appeared from Calliope Nerve Media.  Full of Crow published his ebook, The Feathered Masks. His work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best of the Web.

Epitaph Seven Years Past

Epitaph Seven Years Past

Morning glories open the field
like snow glistening in sun,
this light tangled in vines
again refuses my entrance here.
I turn the loose earth
searching the murmurs for presence.
Then I held you in legend
like we were alive
while the world like a cenotaph
disguises our closeness with sky.

--John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky. His chapbooks, Prominences and Sinking of the Cloth, appeared from Flutter Press and Set Apart Before the World Was Made appeared from Calliope Nerve Media.  Full of Crow published his ebook, The Feathered Masks. His work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best of the Web.

Blowing Horns

A certain death versus
an existence dabbling
with the lower fragments
of the poverty line,
the line of poverty.

My government
and My parents
made the obvious choice

They call me a minor girl,
and I wash dishes
with gutter water--
just a part-time job.
A shoe factory
employs me
for more hours though.

Each day is insanely long,
with pushes and shoves and slaps
from knowns and unknowns.
Crevices of my heart
are now filled
with a shaky jelly
of fear and pain.

But (smiles) little whiffs
of joy do come
in childish and childlike fashion,
scattered in occurrence
and reminding,
me of my age.

And about three months back,
boys at the factory touched me--
some weird places.

The fear of this night
somehow seems to have started there

My father,
feverish forever,
ordered me to please the insides
of this monstrous black car
where two gentlemen
blow their horns.

I know how.
I know why.

The generation
you are proud of,
is full of knowledge.

--Tanuj Solanki works in an insurance firm in Bombay. He is 24. His work has been published in online journals such as Cartier Street Review, Tin Foil Dresses, Crisis Chronicles Library. He is currently completing a short story collection about fatalism in Indian cities, titled The Bom Bay of Life. He just can’t learn swimming.

DOWN IN THE HOLE

DOWN IN THE HOLE

Trying to be someone I was hit by a train

Of thought in my youth I thought that

I might someday obtain a personality

A visa into a world of myself who

I am remains an encumbrance

I could just as well do without him he

Has been nothing but a burden a harness

Cursed by genes and countless beatings

Understand I am someone you should

Pass unheeding deep underground

--Steven Gulvezan was born in Detroit and has spent his career as a library director and a journalist.  His fiction and poetry have appeared in over twenty different literary publications.  He is an avid tennis fan, a prolific reader, a member of the Mystery Writers of America and a film aficionado.  He resides in Michigan with his wife, Karen and his dog, Yogi.

Goanna

Goanna

Guyana Indian iguana

                              monitor

creek-swim

                           tree-climb

spider eating “Sand Gould”.

Forked-tongued

                            swordtail

scorpion sting toothpick.

Four-foot saunter

                                   back

leg sprint

                                     egg

nest plugged camouflage

centipede chased

                             cannibal

carrion chew.

--Kevin Heaton lives and writes in South Carolina. His chapbook, "Postcards of Faith," is at Victorian Violet Press. His work has appeared in: Calliope Nerve, Pirene's Fountain, Counterexample Poetics, Right Hand Pointing, Nerve Cowboy, Elimae, Foliate Oak, Nibble, and many others. http://kevinheatonpoetry.webstarts.com/publications.html

Three Visual Pieces From RC Miller

--RC Miller lives in Metuchen, New Jersey and maintains a blog at VISION BLUES. He is the author of the Calliope Nerve Media chap GORE.

Any and All

Any and All

God love journal editors. 

They issue guidelines admonishing

writers to send them their finest work

in ‘any and all’ styles; other than

rhyming or greeting card verse.

However, all editors are writers 

themselves, with unique styles,

and for reasons inherent to human

nature, naturally gravitate toward 

displaying preferences for work similar 

to their own; relegating the bastard 

term: ‘any and all,’ to oxymoron status.

--Kevin Heaton lives and writes in South Carolina. His chapbook, "Postcards of Faith," is at Victorian Violet Press. His work has appeared in: Calliope Nerve, Pirene's Fountain, Counterexample Poetics, Right Hand Pointing, Nerve Cowboy, Elimae, Foliate Oak, Nibble, and many others. http://kevinheatonpoetry.webstarts.com/publications.html

Confession #2

Confession #2

There is the limp lack.

There is the slumped back

of a child staring at her hump-

backed shadow—slow,

a camel through a needled

conscience, a sponge of hooks.

Nails draw blood and the lungs

begin to descend, dragged by gravity,

the sin of suspension, the art of the lie.

Her grin is dirt irritated

into pearl, her tongue a rag

of earth pinned by skin,

the weight an earthball

in her chest, air so heavy

the world slows its spin. She shuts her lids

and the shadow follows in,

lockstep with dreams:

a frayed belt, a smooth stone

lost down a grate, a bus late

with no destination.  She wakes

with a cord, a placental ghost,

a parachute above her bed.

The phone rings.  The alarm.  The host

floods back, sun again.

--Janann Dawkins' work has appeared in publications such as decomP, Existere, Mezzo Cammin, Ouroboros Review & Two Review, among others. Leadfoot Press published her chapbook Micropleasure in 2008. A graduate of Grinnell College with a B.A. in American Studies & twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, she resides in Ann Arbor, MI.

Confession #1

Confession #1

There is the limp lack.

There is the slumped back

slick with sin, the sin

that did her in.

That water runnin'

up her pump. Ditch-dark

piss-poor water jumpin'

like a sparked electric

outlet. Don't put

that fork in her

open holes.

Listen, you want

your sins in a basket

like dirty whites, marks

that bleach brings back.

Bleach cleans. Bleach

that poignant

little nettle

and let syrupy goodness

bring you back.

--Janann Dawkins' work has appeared in publications such as decomP, Existere, Mezzo Cammin, Ouroboros Review & Two Review, among others. Leadfoot Press published her chapbook Micropleasure in 2008. A graduate of Grinnell College with a B.A. in American Studies & twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, she resides in Ann Arbor, MI.

Confession #3

Confession #3

There the nerves twitch.

Then synapses switch

inconsequentially & slap

across the synaptic gap

serotonin, neurotoxins'

cousin, a misfired gun

shot through, a boson

atom of fun

parachuting into digital

circuitry, surgical

wires layering data

into place, stratum to strata.

Mislaid.  Patterns

patchwork together, learn

new avenues

of danger, paths accrue

faultlines of activity,

negative electricity

bounding back along

irregular tracks.

There the nerves twitch.

There the lips jerk, stitched

together, then apart.

The logic of a lie is an art.

 
--Janann Dawkins' work has appeared in publications such as decomP, Existere, Mezzo Cammin, Ouroboros Review & Two Review, among others. Leadfoot Press published her chapbook Micropleasure in 2008. A graduate of Grinnell College with a B.A. in American Studies & twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, she resides in Ann Arbor, MI.

quoteABLE

"...even though all mysteries contain secrets, not all secrets contain mysteries." --Sturges/Willingham

Ideas

Ideas

 

excavate logic’s uncanny retribution

                        disproportionate swarming wind

gales of thoughtful

                                    elemental interrogatives

                                                                                    hankering vertical

movement (horizontal unblamed, shopworn examinations)

                        glorified resemblance of night’s

remarkable

                                    dust of interrogation.

                                               

                                                                                                —after gilded communication

pleasantry

hardened radiance

            asterisk skeletal pronunciation

                                                                        culminating subsequent climatic

venture desolate prior delving apparition.

--Felino A. Soriano (b. 1974, California) is a case manager and advocate for developmentally and physically disabled adults. He edits/publishes Counterexample Poetics, www.counterexamplepoetics.com, an online journal of experimental artistry, and Differentia Press, dedicated to publishing e-chapbooks of experimental poetry. As a poet, he has authored several collections of poetry, including Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008), Search among the Absent Found (Recycled Karma Press, 2009), Apperceptions of Reinterpretations (Calliope Nerve Media, 2009), Delineated Functions of Congregated Constructs (Calliope Nerve Media, 2010) and r (please press, 2009). The internal collocation of philosophical studies and love of classic and avant-garde jazz is the explanation for his poetic stimulation. Details are at his website, www.felinosoriano.com.

Confession #7

 Confession #7

Behind her, beyond sight,

in a black box, there is her stash,

her last laugh, the frightening bits

of her sad stains.  Smells like camphor

and licorice.  Black liquor.

Jagermeister, yes, it once made her sick.

She was through with it.

Now to this.  This bliss

in a bottle.  Stuck in a cardboard

box and shoved across the counter.

Take it, it's yours.  It's bliss

for a schizophrenic.  It's meant

to make you well, but it will

bleed you.   It'll make you feel

like sickle cell.

--Janann Dawkins' work has appeared in publications such as decomP, Existere, Mezzo Cammin, Ouroboros Review & Two Review, among others. Leadfoot Press published her chapbook Micropleasure in 2008. A graduate of Grinnell College with a B.A. in American Studies & twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, she resides in Ann Arbor, MI.

Carnival of Oleanders

Carnival of Oleanders 
 

Your carnival mirror eyes

report your distorted view of me.

Yes, my shoes are much too big,

so why tie the laces together?

Ok… I know my flower

squirts you in the face, but

only when you touch it. Too bad

it only holds water. Perhaps

the next time you make me fall

I’ll crawl over and pick some lovely

white oleanders for my table. Then,

to make amends for my being

so clumsy, maybe I’ll invite you

to dinner and... oops!

--Wynne Huddleston’s poetry has been or will be published in the Birmingham Arts Journal, Raven Chronicles, The Stray Branch, THEMA, Camroc Press Review, Grandmother Earth XVII, Gemini Magazine, Emerald Tales, Waterways, From the Porch Swing, joyful!, The New Fairy Tales Anthology and others. Her website is http://wynnehuddleston.wordpress.com/

I Trip on My Poems

I Trip on My Poems

In the night when poems

are born, I search for the hidden words,

secrets stretch inside my metaphors.

Even near my tender moments

when the images blossom into rain flowers

I trip on stems cut my way loose to nowhere.

I go there to see what I can find.

--Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois

New Job in a Small Office

Third day on the new job and Sue calls.

Will I hurry home and sit with our daughter

while she runs with Sean to the doctor.

I tell the boss why I’m leaving.

He says too bad about the boy and calls

the timekeeper who marks his ledger

and begins to keen for the parents

and for the deaf mute bobbing in the back room

stuffing envelopes and licking them.

I’m four tiles away from the front door

when my co-workers rise from their desks,

zipping their flies, changing their tampons.

They sing, a cappella,

“We’re all going with you.”

Except for the receptionist

who is eight months pregnant.

Her nails are chipping,

her ankles are swelling.

She sits all day, eyes

at the switchboard, ears in receivers,

her stomach a zeppelin

a moment from lift-off.

When the others rush out the door

it’s too much: She screams, throws her

breasts in the air like beach balls

and cries, “What soul among you cares:

For months my vagina’s been itching.”

--Donal Mahoney,  a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, MO. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. One of many Pushcart Prize nominees, he has had poems published in The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Public Republic (Bulgaria), Calliope Nerve and other publications.

NICHITA

NICHITA

You look overweight unprepared for a photograph.
You look dishevelled
Posing for a magazine.
You look like a drunkard
Alive to sentimentality now
You look proud wearing
A cracked leather jacket
Your father forgot behind
For you to recry memories.
Your grey eyes now
They stare like ice blue
Vodka.
Staring away to a cement reminder of mortality…
And who bled you? Who
Reinvented mathematics?
Failing his Nobel,
Painting his underwear red,
Shot you in sepia
Looking like a man not a child,
Like a wolf like a lion,
Like you’re unsure the
Dimension to carve up
And when but now
Your cheeks, wet, ballooned,
Wept demons and spread
Wings over black walls.

--This poem is from The Wooden Tongue Speaks, by Bogdan Tiganov, soon to be published by Honest Publishing.

A Dew Drop...

A Dew Drop Falling from a Bird's Wing

Wakes Rosalie, Who Has Been Asleep

in the Shadow of a Spider's Web

(after the painting by Joan Miró, 1939)

Rosalie asleep

(Or half asleep)

So sensuous

So slight

In her silken gown

She waits

A princess

For a morning knight

To kiss her mouth

And be awake

To be alive again.

Instead

The kiss is from

A soaring bird

Dropping morning dew

Upon her lips

Awakened byt the dawn

Beside a spreading

Spider's web.

No knight

No dawn

No dream

On, sweet Rosalie,

Better to sleep

Than be caught

In the shadow of the net.

-Neil Ellman is a retired educator living and working in New Jersey.  During the past two years, he has published 125+ ekphrastic poems throughout the world, including four chapbooks, the most recent of which is The Great Metaphysician and Other Ekphrastic Inventions (Erbacce Press).

Bukowski and Carver

Bukowski and Carver

I found Bukowski late,

already dead,

the same laggard way I discovered Carver.

Last night, though, the three of us had drinks

and my pen clinked against the glass

with each laugh,

both men croaky and smoking,

Chuck a drunken gargoyle with folds in his face

and Ray so shy he’d have been right at home

locked in an attack.

The evening went along

like a raft ride down rough rapids,

and just as I was about to get my question out,

the alarm plundered my dream with its thunder

so that I never did find out

if either one

thought I had talent.
 
--Len Kuntz lives on a lake with his wife, son, an eagle and three pesky beavers.  His work appears widely in print and online at such places as Clutching At Straws, The Camel Saloon and lenkuntz.blogspot.com

Catalan Landscape (The Hunter)

Catalan Landscape (The Hunter)

(after the painting by Joan Miró, 1923-24)

Perhaps he seems more a hunter

Than a hunted thing

Perhaps

There is pray to be had

On this Catalan plain

Where spiders abound

And vultures soar

With tireless

Meaningless contempt

Over villages

Of trilons and cones

And shapes without names

Perhaps

He is the hunted

One-eyed thing

The only one

Pushed to extinction

By a determined sun


--Neil Ellman is a retired educator living and working in New Jersey.  During the past two years, he has published 125+ ekphrastic poems throughout the world, including four chapbooks, the most recent of which is The Great Metaphysician and Other Ekphrastic Inventions (Erbacce Press).

The Woman

The Woman

I could not speak.
Maybe loved more gently
I could have.
Maybe if there was a moon
I could have.

But only sun -
a crazy glue
unswallowed
lips sealed
slays weds
impregnates
itself.

This is what I cannot say,
this is what they refuse to hear:
After death is pre- natal.
Through me, everything is world.
Without me?
Conception is by eating,
birth by excretion.

--PD Lyons newest book Caribu&Sister Stones published by Lapwing Press Belfast.

icarus speaks

icarus speaks

sun above
sea below
one possible end
o irony
this moment alone
to learn
the death spiral
our one
true flight

 

--Rich Follett has recently returned to writing poetry after a thirty-year hiatus. He lives in the sacred and timeless Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he joyfully teaches English and Theatre Arts for high school students. His poems have appeared in numerous contemporary journals and e-zines, including BlazeVox, Paraphilia, Exercise Bowler, Calliope Nerve, Sugar Mule, Four Branches Press and Counterexample Poetics, for which he is a Featured Artist. He is the co-author of Responsorials (with Constance Stadler). Most recently, his haiku/photo combination Aurora's Adieu received first place honors in the first international iPoetry Poe-Tography Competition.

The Diary of a Seducer

The Diary of a Seducer

I have a mind
to dissolve your fingers.
What would it take?
What combination
of flesh and magic
is needed?
To turn your blood to dust.
I’m sure your teeth are wild.
Enough to test my tongue.
After that?
It’s all over.
. . . But the crunch.

--A.J. Huffman is a poet and freelance writer in Daytona Beach, Florida.  She has previously published her work in literary journals, in the U.K. as well as America, such as Avon Literary Intelligencer, Eastern Rainbow, Medicinal Purposes Literary Review, The Intercultural Writer's Review, Icon, Writer's Gazette, and The Penwood Review.

Dark Water and White Stone

Dark Water and White Stone

The perfume in this bottle has turned.
Bitter.
And stale as the air.
It settles on my skin
like lead.
I smell dead.
Smash the urn.
And grind it in my fist
till it’s ash.
But I am not its genie
or its master.
The pieces will not complete my wish.
They cling to me like sin.
Absorbing my resolve.
I dare not wear this shadow too long.
Mine is fickle.
Jealous.
And spends its nights
in solid despair.
Listen.
You can hear it
crying in the hall.
Open the door and it is gone.
Clinging to the feet of a nightmare.
Buried
in the breath of a rose.





--A.J. Huffman is a poet and freelance writer in Daytona Beach, Florida.  She has previously published her work in literary journals, in the U.K. as well as America, such as Avon Literary Intelligencer, Eastern Rainbow, Medicinal Purposes Literary Review, The Intercultural Writer's Review, Icon, Writer's Gazette, and The Penwood Review.