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A blank day of those frozen car fingers gyrating on some hot clock’s breath

By the stood and bossy moonlight of a parked radiance that we could just swath

 some arguments folding under the inside of actually what sustains us

 for some lost ends down around a float off the nearest usable

 bending forever to pick the collectables over these thrown to give it truth

 with some real sweet emblems coloring down around the birds and all their flowers

 being deprived to move the smaller versions of their large grin

 while the roots of styrofoam sofa juice curl in the intimidation of womb flesh. 

--Zack Sternwalker writes and draws.  He has work online at www.debutantehair.com and a blog at www.debutantehair.blogspot.com.

a crease, bending in the afterglow [fig 1]

a crease, bending in the afterglow [fig. I]

gleaming low monk

quint essent execution;

lines lay lines in seldom

articulation        high

beam    exaggeration

upon stains                                       

                                upon st/ains--\

                                                                upon stains

                on the   wall.

--[d]avid : [t]omaloff (b. 1972) | racine, WI, US | author, LIONTAMER’S BLUES (six eight press) | his work has also appeared in Ditch Poetry, Otoliths, elimae, Counterexample Poetics, BlazeVOX 2KX, Deuce Coupe, Straylight Literary Arts Magazine, Four and Twenty, Pismire Poetry, and is forthcoming in, Blue & Yellow Dog, Turntable & Blue Light, Whale Sound, and and/or | see: http://davidtomaloff.com/.

all of everything, all of the time

all of everything, all of the time

speaker enticing procession
Semitic, semantic, symbiotic
war in dreams, war on land &-
war on everything all the time;
thimble train articulation
dropping bombs on third world
plantation jazz hands – jump(_)
motherfucker, jump – jump(_
motherfucker, jump(_
western culture runs like
blood on the floors of diamond mines
out of the vein and down through
the cracks – oh, hollow
oh, crack – oh, bullet!
the chamber, the cell
your stereo, your system
your dreams, you’re semi-
your illicit, you’re anti-
your conflict invitations
oh, and just say no
gun powder, corn syrup-
aspartame venom jugular
and pretty-producing bottles
of shellac-face and hair dyed
_war on everything _war all the time

--[d]avid : [t]omaloff (b. 1972) | racine, WI, US | author, LIONTAMER’S BLUES (six eight press) | his work has also appeared in Ditch Poetry, Otoliths, elimae, Counterexample Poetics, BlazeVOX 2KX, Deuce Coupe, Straylight Literary Arts Magazine, Four and Twenty, Pismire Poetry, and is forthcoming in, Blue & Yellow Dog, Turntable & Blue Light, Whale Sound, and and/or | see: http://davidtomaloff.com/..

unundone

unundone

she said that what is said
cannot be unsaid
and now that what she said
got written
it cannot be unwritten either
if that is somehow sad
it cannot be unsad
whatever can be and gets
whittled away can ever
be unwhittled back
broken mirrors do no tend
to mend themselves
and unmended they are deemed
unlucky
what is deemed unlucky cannot be
undeemed
stays unredeemed
a life undone is death
undead just isn't done
unalive is fine

--Levi Wagenmaker (1944 - ) is a retired journalist, living in the Netherlands for most of the year, and in France for some of it (in spring and autumn), with three bitches, two of whom are dogs.

siren song

siren song

first day of November Monday
followed Halloween Sunday
Monday noon sirens sounded
testing testing testing testing
not in late alarm at ghosts and ghouls
but to shrilly intone disaster
disasters of varying nature
natural and unnatural
none supernatural
one wail for the impending explosion
of nuclear bombs
another for biochemical assault
a howl for bird-droppings hitting
the queen's outrageous hat of the day
a groan for fallen leafs on railway tracks
but not a whimper for Armageddon
not a whisper for the Youngest Day
nor a grunt for Ragnarok
Dutch uncle Dutch comfort Dutch
sirenian serenity

--Levi Wagenmaker (1944 - ) is a retired journalist, living in the Netherlands for most of the year, and in France for some of it (in spring and autumn), with three bitches, two of whom are dogs.

a finger's tale

a finger's tale

only in Dutch popular wisdom
can one hear it asserted
that tastiness does not extend
beyond a finger's length
an assertion whose empirical basis
is most likely found in insertion
Dutch folklore reserves a distinctive role
for the act of insertion
culminating in the nation's rescue
from catastrophic inundation
by a young boy's finger inserted
into a dyke showing a puncture
subsequent experimentation
with the insertion of fingers into
various openings and orifices
(and lastly into the mouth of the experimenter)
would have inevitably led
to an association between
insertion and the resulting
flavouring of fingers

--Levi Wagenmaker (1944 - ) is a retired journalist, living in the Netherlands for most of the year, and in France for some of it (in spring and autumn), with three bitches, two of whom are dogs

Complications of the Journey

Complications of the Journey

Your self-inflicted gunshot lying

rattler on a hot night road

stopped me dead;

stretched out, full length

in all your glory, like in bed.

Couldn't go back or around

your unsleeping pose,

and any idiot knows

not to try

to step over

the strike zone.

Walking up in the dark

anyone might mistake 

you for a phantom limb

with phantom fangs

that sunk me

good, until a long time

later, screwing up

my courage to look again

at shadows, found

just: a sinuous trail of dust

that let me pass on.

–-Susan Lynch is recovering from graduating Reed College in May, mostly by watching elk graze with her horse. She particularly likes flickers and Pictish stones, is decades older than most colleagues, and has been a bunch of things. Her poem 'Proverbial' was recently published in the Oxford University Poetry Society's magazine, ASH.

hoary verses

hoary verses

whore-frost suggests phrostitution
a Monday at 6.00 A.M.
not much of a moon in the sky
so many stars making up for
lack of lunacy
and the grass on the meadow
up the slope
shouting albedo at the scintillating darkness
as yet shrinking from dawn
gather a chilly handful
of frosty blades of grass
dip them into a whiskey just poured
much more aesthetically pleasing
than ice cubes
a single malt whiskey
on a Monday morning at 6.00 A.M.
chilled with frosty blades of meadow grass
whore-frost suggesting phrostitution
ah the poetry
of it all

--Levi Wagenmaker (1944 - ) is a retired journalist, living in the Netherlands for most of the year, and in France for some of it (in spring and autumn), with three bitches, two of whom are dogs.

Brilliant

                                       

“Todo que brilla no es oro,” said Sancho Panza in Don Quixote.  No shit, Sherlock, nearly 400 years before guys like Faron Young and Lefty Frizzell lit up country & western music and television in suits sequined like personal disco balls with lapels.  Those were the glory days of c&w, before the money took over and manufactured Toby Keith selling Ford trucks, warfare and God.  One of those guys wore an orange suit, orange like the juice that Bing Crosby would drink when he wasn’t slapping his family around.

Oh, so you say that Cervantes was actually elevating, not presaging pre-Elvis bling.  And even though Faron Young shot himself dead and Lefty Frizzell wasn’t even left-handed, my country & western-loving friends would protest that those guys too, sung of the elevated human spirit.  Quixote had his armor and madness, Young and Frizzell had their sequins and twangs.  All of them liked to be seen with horses.  One of them tilted at windmills, which we find mildly amusing 400 years later, but not as alarming as orange sequins.

--Jeff Santosuosso is a business executive and poet who lives near Fort Worth, TX.  His work has appeared in Pif, Hobo Pancakes, and Clean Sheets magazines.

SITTING WITH THE *MAN*

SITTING WITH THE *MAN*

Cameras saw the inflating head as a possible sign of more human expectorations in the living room of Vladimir Putin. ‘I’m so happy,’ shouted the guest, which was actually part of a long rant by Houdini in his natural environment when given a grease gun – but everyone knows him as a stickler for improvisation, hence the head.

His host had driven cork screws through Houdini’s wrists into the wooden armchair’s armrests. ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I’m deconstructing the Dougie. Dry heaving helps.’ ‘I see it’s very handsome,’ the uncomfortable-looking dictator says, looking uncomfortable.

The dwarf groove is a vomitous dance which one can vomit up at a whim, and it takes no skill. ‘This is what I do when I feel uncomfortable,’ Putin says commencing, in his golden chair, to vomit in front of the cameras and a whole nation which saw itself, in response, falling from a plane tip to toe like a garish kamikaze ad banner.

‘Niccccccce. You should teach me that someday.’ Houdini spews the contents of his brains into the spiral holes in his wrists, then wrests himself free with that old familiar grunt, the one that says: the canonization of sweet potatoes was the most unintentionally hilarious moment in the history of all of sainthood.

‘Irreconcilable Honda,’ said Putin after a guard interrupted the interview to present him with a large package. It was clear that he was busy unwrapping an African White Rhino.

‘Disintegration, Mr Houdini. Right before my very eyes. Don’t you dare?’ he said before bringing his attention back to his guest, who was sitting there grinning.

--Tyson Bley was born in 1978 in South Africa and at the age of 30 moved to Germany, where he continues to live semi-reclusively with a malignant Internet addiction. His work has appeared in MyFavoriteBullet, Blazevox, Poets Of The East Village, Clutching At Straws, Disenthralled, and print journals like Smash Cake and Kerouac's Dog. His personal blog is located at http://soapstain.blogspot.com/.

THE ROAD (AN IMITATION)

THE ROAD (AN IMITATION)

At one point during the night he lifted his chin to the blighted sky where a thousand minds had nuked themselves and said softly, ‘This is all a porn parody. The collapse of solipsism is pornography. Showing me how much you care – helping me drag my sleeping bag across the now-wasted now-blackened land of solipsism, and giving me some of your stinking tinned soup and admittedly quite delicious Beefaroni, scratching the hard-to-reach itches on my back with your steelwool beard – parodies through and through the very craft of pornography.’
 
--Tyson Bley was born in 1978 in South Africa and at the age of 30 moved to Germany, where he continues to live semi-reclusively with a malignant Internet addiction. His work has appeared in MyFavoriteBullet, Blazevox, Poets Of The East Village, Clutching At Straws, Disenthralled, and print journals like Smash Cake and Kerouac's Dog. His personal blog is located at http://soapstain.blogspot.com/.

From And We All Fall

#1

Don't ever say I won't see it

Be why this autumn feels so cold

And I will take apart my afflicted hatred for pretenses

As I hate life for what you will never do.

Can't see those eyes glaring with freed desire

All so clear

Bleeding edges that stain white lines

I need something more than someone

To give this autumn back to you

One step too close from a cloudy sunshine breaking

And make it last.

You must have to never be wrong

God tells you my secret in confident measure

Live not what you learn while I burn

And I hate you so much.

Everything turning red in my world that blurs

Promised hurt comes faster when you obey

I paid the price for more than someone true

And faith lost for the willing was finding it in you

Nothing like the glow of a smile defined by silent fears

And I want you fiending with freed desire

To know you like that.

Break you, fuck you, kill you

For I gave too much

Don't say I won't see it again

Why this autumn feels so cold.

--Scott T. Swartz enjoyed free will and made his own choices until he no longer could. Life as a simple man, he began creative writing at a very young age and continued until his final diagnosis, after many, of schizoaffective disorder - bipolar type I (rapid cycle). Crawling out of the gap he ultimately began writing after he proceeded to obtain his General Education Development diploma, in lieu of high school graduation and attended a California community college. He also enjoyed writing lyrical poetry which he seeks to be performed in a rock band somehow. All obstacles aside, his choices returned after exhaustive treatment with a dark remainder: his inner tone and favorite past times of listening to music, exploring the internet to manifest future goals in vain, and living life as a free man contemplating a world of limitless potential yet to be revealed in the present tense...which still may be.

Once, During A Viewing Of Smokey & The Bandit

Once, During A Viewing Of Smokey & The Bandit

I'm staring eastbound and down,
loading up my shit
and about to truck it,
as Melanie sits on the couch.
Her eyes forward,
only noticing our end
in the few moments
I cross the TV.

"If you're going to the store, good buddy,"
she says, like talking over a cb-radio,
"why don't you get me some beer
and smokes?  Over."
She calls them smokes
--has forever--
just drives my sack across a rake.

But it was no straw--
not when blackmailed pictures
find wrong hands.
Not when a tape exists.
A back-alley finger-fest
destined for Youporn or worse.

I look at the television, my TV,
my copy of S and TB blaring.
It's a good gift to go out on--
silence and a few thousand feet
of Southern celluloid.
She won't notice for hours--
not until the nicotine
and her liver
speak out of turn--
a rage unseen since the day
I intercepted her sins
and cleansed them
with the father
of our little boy.

--Jason L. Huskey is a multitasking office tech from central Virginia. His work has appeared in a few dozen journals, including decomP, Keyhole Magazine, Plain Spoke, and Word Riot.

My Mother’s Pillow

My Mother’s Pillow

My father was still filling me in on details as I waded across the floor to my mother’s side of their bed and lowered myself onto the blue and green striped duvet. At sixteen, I knew better than to plug my ears with my fingers. He’d roar if I did, vocal cords bug-eyed in his throat. So I sank my face into my mother’s pillow, surrounding it with my arms.

She’d been declared dead of cardiac arrest four weeks earlier. From the pillow, I could still catch the faint scent of VO5 shampoo – and her.             

The announcement for which Dad had summoned me:  He was expecting a guest tonight, Tracey, a twenty-something waitress he knew from the restaurant he and Mom used to go to for breakfast, just the two of them.  There was something endearing about Tracey; she sucked her thumb after sex.

“Well?” he asked, arms folded across his chest. “Will you do it now, please?”

“Do what?”

 He scratched the tip of his nose and answered me kindly, as he did when addressing someone of slightly less than normal intelligence. “Find a friend’s house to stay at tonight?” he said. “Tracey’d be embarrassed if you were here when she is.”

Tracey couldn’t, at least, have been on my mother’s pillow yet; it would smell different if she had.

--Leslie Greffenius used to wake up at five am in order to work on the novel she had always wanted to write. A few years ago, she sold her business and is now able to get up somewhat later and still write full time. Her novel is currently pulled apart into several stacks while she tries to figure out what's wrong with it.

Burn!

Burn!

schools

exploded

watch them fall

the children dancing

around and around

dizzy

dizzy

dizzy

they

fall

kick the bricks

slight pain silent

keep it quiet

it’s time to go

white noise static

they laugh silently

as they nail the

teachers’ skins to the post

destruct

reconstruct

walk to the beach sit down

girls and boys stare at the sun

until it spins and sinks

they hold hands laugh

then

welcome

the fetus’

return

--Peter Marra is a writer who lives in Williamsburg Brooklyn. Among his influences are Tristan Tzara, Paul Eluard, Edgar Allan Poe, Russ Meyer, and Roger Corman. He has been published in amphibi.us, Yes Poetry, Maintenant 4, Beatnik, Crash, Danse Macabre, Caper Literary Journal, and Clutching At Straws.He is currently constructing his first collection of po

Window

Window

                        angle                                                                            mosaic

primitive                                   glass                                             saffron

                                trapezoid                                              light           

 rojo                                                                                                                 phoenix

                                                 chunks                          thick                            

            pointillism                                                         mortar                          embed

             oral                                            sanctuary                               intersection

                           sanctuary                                                      

                                                                                    blue                                          parable

--Monica Garvin Wells resides in Aiken, South Carolina.  She is a graduate of The University of South Carolina-Aiken and  studied creative writing at The University of South Carolina-Columbia with poet Janet Sylvester.  She is a past winner of the Porter Fleming Writing Competition and the South Carolina Writers Workshop Competition.

Cuckold's Plea

You'll never see him again, you say,

but what if he brings to your room

a midnight poem he says

he's written for you.

Will you read it together 

a couple of times, out loud,

as you have in the past?

And what if he then

shoots like a rocket

into the forest, igniting the fire,

as he has in the past.

Will you see him again?

We have the children 

to think about.

That's why I'm here.

We all need to know.

--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.

Alabaster’s isn’t

Alabaster’s isn’t                  

                                                apologetic, then why apprehended

querying reliant silent skin spoken awash

away                again remodeled sun-arid

                                                                                    dry dyed

                                    compos mentis freelance

            receptive gained again viable relentless.

                        Performing

mendacity

                                                monotony debase

relic acclimating prison, want-thoughts

                                                                        outer freed

resilient alteration

                                                outer this skin compels stagnant

abbreviated existence

                                                priorly redeemed rudimentary

seismic convulsion those uninformed of bland’s cultural

unawareness—

--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.

Function of the body believed to be executed

 Function of the body believed to be executed

 

Broken           

            the

punctuating pencil continues

enigmatic dissertation

                                    imagistic passive

heightened ascertaining

                                                wardrobe

brightened red as death’s

                        disclaiming warning.  Importunate

                                                                        function grayed lead

outlining eyes’ oracular function:

breath of memory’s forgotten mostly

            wind-woven promise

detailing monotony italicized aggregate

                                                            positioned necessary upon

epidemic reusing. 

--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.

Created Caveats of Nonchalant Meanderings

Created Caveats of Nonchalant Meanderings

 

                                                                                  Detailed

                                                circumstances

highlighting flecks of semiotic clarity

holding

                        held renditions

concrete paradigms describing

wanted desolation

                                                prior to

                                                                        obstructed focus

random near altruistic reenacted

                                                                                                            fractals.

--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.

Musical nonetheless

Musical nonetheless

as

            versions of an hour’s composition

                                    struggle-sighs

                        strangely

                                                hanging

                                                                        amid shirtless

moments of an era’s misconceived devotional

                                                                                    boredom

            reactionary logic decomposes dusty nuances

relegating now

                                    into looped inconsistence

deaf to the chimes of air’s humble

                                                                                    deconstructed

ruminations 

--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.

Stone’s malfunction

Stone’s malfunction

 

                                                                      or misread interpretational

                        premise

                                                held by shared notion, posit, grief

alabaster veils.  Founded

                                                            neath

attributed fathoms

                        designed by light’s

            angled

                            orchestrated hidings.  Of

neither hope nor northward

                                                            collocational asterisks

arrange rhythmic spins of

improvised cessations

--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.

Specific Gravity

Specific Gravity

curious bird

the yellow-billed Oxpecker

precariously saddling

the immense back

of the ill-tempered Hippo

she spends most of her life there

hardly a pretty bird

unable to warble when she

finally does fly

dependent on the mighty Hippo

all the sustenance its body yields

picking at old wounds

picking at the parasites

and fat auburn ticks

that look oddly Roman

the Hippo serves a purpose

and some forget

that he is widely regarded

as one of land’s most dangerous mammals

especially when one foolishly attempts

a surprise attack

the Hippo can outrun any

praying human, predator, or parasite

without breaking a blood sweat

so count your little blessings

when he tastefully decides

to stop and settle for a midday

graze in the lush grass

as to avoid indigestion

constructive aggression

the yellow-billed Oxpecker

supposedly serves a purpose too,

but her beak is dull

and often untrue in its

myopic aim

she short eyes the prize

she picks at a wound

and poisons only herself

she dies and no one notices

not the Hippo, or even the wound,

for she too was a parasite

the parasite serves no purpose

a profoundly meaningless existence

the only significant act of its life

is leaving it

its only form of expression is sucking

for without the sucking

it is already dead

it depends on a host

for life, shape, and uneasy,

insincere validation

the Hippo hardly even notices

any of this

he soulfully yawns

and when he does

you are reminded

of a cobra striking

as it pauses actual air

then pushes it again

as he moves on

toward the cool rivers

he often dreams of

huge heart too light

to be a burden

too alive

to be a legend

hardly holy

for that is an empty word

only a self-righteous human

would ascribe to a being

he knows of much

better uses for mud

even when it dumbly

spells itself backwards

if only for self-definition –

self-dissolution.

--William Crawford's first book, Fire in the Marrow, was just released by Neopoiesis Press. For more information please visit: http://www.neopoiesispress.com/12401/46923.html.

a Sliver of Silver for Every Eye Sold

a Sliver of Silver for Every Eye Sold

In Gethsemane corners

where olive trees

cower in clusters

of frayed nerve endings

and shade is seldom offered

the day grows traitor cold.

the sun wounds indiscriminately

Boy pins Goliath beetle

to ground old enough to know better

channels light through monocle

stolen from his sleeping grandfather

raises digitus impudicus to embalmed sky

(from left hand, right holds stolen monocle)

a paltry, empty gesture

dull flash of i.q.

proof of self –

doubt.

the rain is a leaving song not an aberration

Some union scale trumpeter ushered in

a new light brigade charging

another herd crossing fault lines

looking for a leader

but dawn was bruised

still tender in recovery

and the brigade blew a fuse

as the trumpeter blew a grace note

the sound suggested a paper rectum,

solitary parchment tiger, a weak heart.

this agony is a garden I shall name after you

Father, my sweat is turning to blood, see?

each drop sounds like an executioner’s approaching footstep

one graceless note in a hastened threnody

a choir of fallen angels

lyre hipped and out of joint

mother, it’s alright now

this sudden darkness does not lie

and in this alone I find comfort

for this is no dream that precludes conclusion

my flesh is tearing from bone,

soon I’ll be weightless again.

--William Crawford's first book, Fire in the Marrow, was just released by Neopoiesis Press. For more information please visit: http://www.neopoiesispress.com/12401/46923.html.

Long Gone Division

Long Gone Division

for Ian Curtis

whiskey

ghost

film

dry

ice

age

melts

anchor

drops

river

moves

dream

descends.

--William Crawford's first book, Fire in the Marrow, was just released by Neopoiesis Press. For more information please visit: http://www.neopoiesispress.com/12401/46923.html.

Space Monkey

Space Monkey

shut your mouth

you are the
       space monkey

you will fly
       where we tell you to
   and
       be our litmus test
so that we may know
what we can do
without having to check the waters
        on our own

we owe you nothing

do this for us

    the greater good
is the good
    you may never know

--Maxwell Baumbach makes a mean bowl of Ramen. He also edits the Heavy Hands Ink publication and has a youtube channel (Youtube.com/MaxwellThePoet). His first chapbook, "Suburban Rhythm," was published by cc&d through Scars Publications in September. It is available both as a free read and as an ISBN # book. His work has appeared a bunch of places, so google it. He calls Elmhurst, IL his home.

&

&

half casual en trant

my new ness evades me

and I’m pre dispo se d

to whirr and to clatter

and to bang  {“and to bane}

and to bandage o’er the will

if my mind starts to wander(*)

full as I might, have stepping

on my blue;  suede fuse

good luck with the  {  “y’know”  }

pre-phone we used to

write with pen and scissors

r              unning, running with paper

and running with hands

holding then, nothing-

but between these teeth-

nothing, that is-

which could not

be forgiven

--[d]avid : [t]omaloff (b. 1972) | racine, WI, US | author, LIONTAMER’S BLUES (six eight press) | his work has also appeared in Ditch Poetry, Otoliths, elimae, Counterexample Poetics, BlazeVOX 2KX, Deuce Coupe, Straylight Literary Arts Magazine, Four and Twenty, Pismire Poetry, and is forthcoming in, Blue & Yellow Dog, Turntable & Blue Light, Whale Sound, and and/or | see:  http://davidtomaloff.com/.

Shapes

Shapes

as a child
he played with

     shaped blocks

jamming them
into the appropriate place

sometimes
he would try to fit the square

     where the circle should go

he found out
that if he tried
          hard enough
he could make it work

so he did that
     the rest of his life

--Maxwell Baumbach makes a mean bowl of Ramen. He also edits the Heavy Hands Ink publication and has a youtube channel (Youtube.com/MaxwellThePoet). His first chapbook, "Suburban Rhythm," was published by cc&d through Scars Publications in September. It is available both as a free read and as an ISBN # book. His work has appeared a bunch of places, so google it. He calls Elmhurst, IL his home.

Fall Season

Fall Season

a seedling is sprouting

          a baby is born

it starts to grow

          he starts to grow

rooted firmly in the ground

          his adolescent frame burly

rotting as it gets older

          corrupted

chainsaw to the base

          noose like his magenta tie

timber

it tumbles

          he leaps

          from the chair

oh

          what a wonderful fall 
--Maxwell Baumbach makes a mean bowl of Ramen. He also edits the Heavy Hands Ink publication and has a youtube channel (Youtube.com/MaxwellThePoet). His first chapbook, "Suburban Rhythm," was published by cc&d through Scars Publications in September. It is available both as a free read and as an ISBN # book. His work has appeared a bunch of places, so google it. He calls Elmhurst, IL his home.

Spider

Spider

there is a spider

crawling along the walls

of my bedroom

he circles

     goes up

     goes down

and I fear

that he will

               drop down

next to me

so I pretend

that if I close my eyes

     this will all go away

--Maxwell Baumbach makes a mean bowl of Ramen. He also edits the Heavy Hands Ink publication and has a youtube channel (Youtube.com/MaxwellThePoet). His first chapbook, "Suburban Rhythm," was published by cc&d through Scars Publications in September. It is available both as a free read and as an ISBN # book. His work has appeared a bunch of places, so google it. He calls Elmhurst, IL his home.

ONI

Japanese demons are legless and female.
I have a profound respect for the insight of their culture.
The gallery space is cut in four, four lanes,
arms reach out from a central circular room,
centred itself by the internal wave,
the water sculpture of Onchi Koshiro.
The wonders of the present age of art.
The wave always builds, forever climbing,
just the height of a man & yet it appears to be ever-rising when watched.
I have seen visitors fall asleep observing its growth!
Such is the mesmerising power of water.
It never falls, never crashes, never soddens the carpet.
The crossroads are considered evil places for the Japanese.
I wonder if they built the gallery to call on Sha, Oni, Tenga
or whether they just wanted to profane them
by having the display in the shape of a cross.

--SJ Fowler (1983) has had poetry published in over 70 journals & magazines since the beginning of 2010 and his first collection is released in early 2011 by Veer books. He is a member of the Writers forum poetry group and an employee of the British Museum. He edits the Maintenant interview series for 3am magazine introducing contemporary European poetry into the English language. www.sjfowlerpoetry.com

The November Sky

The November Sky

the crescent moon

     is a splinter

in the sky

the sun

     is a pimple

and the stars

     are specs of dirt

unwashed from the skin

everything is a burden

--Maxwell Baumbach makes a mean bowl of Ramen. He also edits the Heavy Hands Ink publication and has a youtube channel (Youtube.com/MaxwellThePoet). His first chapbook, "Suburban Rhythm," was published by cc&d through Scars Publications in September. It is available both as a free read and as an ISBN # book. His work has appeared a bunch of places, so google it. He calls Elmhurst, IL his home.