Frost Bitten

There was an elasticity to Camilla’s arctic mouth that crunched and spit out anything anyone else said better than any icemaker I’d ever come across. Her biting insults cut across the teeth-gritting tundra of her lips into the bulls-eye of her numbed audience’s ears like frostbite.

“Really,” Camilla would say, after I’d just come up with a great joke to impress the girl next to me who was giving me the eye. “Amazing that you can even comment on any subject, Jack, when your lack of brain cells make up for your…wait what was it?” Then her wintry whites would show through, she’d laugh, “Oh, yeah, suck down another shot of that grain alcohol you love to drown in, so the girls can find out what else you lose besides brain cells. You know, a vertical construct to work with.” Camilla would point her index finger in the air, then roar like those piercing, insufferable winds that lock-jawed my face into some kind of remote, bleak desert and I’d sit there, next to what I imagined was a sultry, soon-to-be-yours-for-at-least-a-week date, who turned quickly from torrid to frosty, now staring through me.

“Don’t bother trying to get away,” Camilla would snicker as I tried to slip another girl past her and out the door, hoping again for some steamy action. The piercing nip of Camilla’s bulldozing blizzard blasted over me as I mumbled to myself, “Why the hell did I ever go out with that frigid beast?”

--Meg Tuite's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including Berkeley Fiction Review, 34th Parallel, One, the Journal, Monkeybicycle and Boston Literary Magazine. She is the fiction editor of The Santa Fe Literary Review and Connotation Press. Her novel "Domestic Apparition" (2011) will soon be available through San Francisco Bay Press. She has a monthly column “Exquisite Quartet” for Used Furniture Review.

A Case for the Tether

Static was testing the limits of the car stereo speakers
fingernail on chalkboard white noise drilling
my back molars while driving
out of broadcast range of her radio station of choice
and me forgetting to bring the CD wallet.

She flicking off the car stereo
tossing the mini remote at my crotch in one deft motion
but it bouncing off then sliding under my ass.
Disappearing.

I CAN’T DO IT.

She going for the gas station coffee
in plain white Styrofoam in the cup holder.
OH, YOU WILL DO IT.

Having a coffee too on my side untouched
His & Hers to sip for our game of He Said/She Said
all tied up like conjugal night crawlers
after exiting I-75 in the rain.
IT’S 90 DAYS.
THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL THAT I CAN DO IT.

Pulling down the visor the mirror light coming on
looking satisfied with her paint job.
WELL IT’S NOT REALLY HELL.
MORE LIKE PURGATORY.

Going Catholic girl on me.
THAT’S BRILLIANT. YOU’RE REALLY GOOD.

TRY IT SOMETIME. Visor up.

Seeing the lawn sign coming up
and beginning to brake.
WE’LL FIND SOMETHING AROUND HERE
AND I’LL MAKE A CASE FOR THE TETHER.

Seeing the FOR RENT with the phone number
in front of the bungalow.
HOUSE ARREST OUT IN THE BOONDOCKS?
DO YA THINK?
NOW I KNOW WHAT THE FUCK
THIS JOY RIDE IS ALL ABOUT.

--Mark James Andrews has had a full and checkered career as a gravedigger, inspector at a defunct auto factory, and librarian. He is the author of Burning Trash (Pudding House, 2010) and his writing has appeared in many print and online venues. He lives one mile from the city limits of Detroit most of the time.

Untitled

Viper/ listless joy of abject/ atrophy
Headless laughter/ in-dreaming/ undone

Broken skin/ starry bloody flesh/ echoes
Vapours/ a dead dancing sun of rot/ callused

Fissure of grey speech/ the absence emptied

Shadow of bled breath
                             Unto the tooth of edge

Unto no not ever/… none
Shattered glass no foot upon/ bloody sands 

----Michael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976) His work has appeared in various print and online zines, including Carcinogenic Poetry, The Recusant, Sex & Murder Magazine, In Between Altered States, Horror, Sleaze & Trash, Negative Suck, Graffiti Kolkata, Danse Macabre, The Plebian Rag, Full of Crow, Fashion For Collapse, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Clockwise Cat, Sein Und Werden, Milk Sugar, The Medulla Review, Counterexample Poetics, Heavy Bear, Indigo Rising, Widowmoon, etc. In the past year he has authored a number of chapbooks, including 'The Gathered Bones', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'Final Fragments', (Calliope Nerve Media), & 'The Death-Streaked Air' (Virgogray Press), 'Debris', (Erbacce-Press) & ‘The Rapacious Night‘, (Calliope Nerve Media), 'Unto Naught', (Erbacce-Press). A longer collection of poems, 'Attributes', is forthcoming from 'Desperanto' in 2011.
http://www.erbacce-press.com/#/michael-mcaloran/4542338472

Untitled

Bile upon skull-dead orchids
Ocean of subtle black harmonic
Clasp-knife of desire/ of death/ scars
Oracle shed in a foreign field left to bleed

--Michael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976) His work has appeared in various print and online zines, including Carcinogenic Poetry, The Recusant, Sex & Murder Magazine, In Between Altered States, Horror, Sleaze & Trash, Negative Suck, Graffiti Kolkata, Danse Macabre, The Plebian Rag, Full of Crow, Fashion For Collapse, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Clockwise Cat, Sein Und Werden, Milk Sugar, The Medulla Review, Counterexample Poetics, Heavy Bear, Indigo Rising, Widowmoon, etc. In the past year he has authored a number of chapbooks, including 'The Gathered Bones', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'Final Fragments', (Calliope Nerve Media), & 'The Death-Streaked Air' (Virgogray Press), 'Debris', (Erbacce-Press) & ‘The Rapacious Night‘, (Calliope Nerve Media), 'Unto Naught', (Erbacce-Press). A longer collection of poems, 'Attributes', is forthcoming from 'Desperanto' in 2011.

asemic

--Orchid Tierney is an Aotearoa/New Zealand avant-garde writer and a freelancer in the television industry (usually within the art department). Her work has appeared in numerous on and offline publications including And/Or (US) Otoliths (AUS) and Takahe (NZ). She edits Rem Magazine.

Untitled

Ash and the black bone kisses
Theatre of wind of hollowed sockets

Night’s pit/ a cunt exposed/ burnt flesh
Carousel/ violent dreaming/ sun of dead breath

Receive the absence with open arms
The sky ever covering/ purpose skinned

--Michael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976) His work has appeared in various print and online zines, including Carcinogenic Poetry, The Recusant, Sex & Murder Magazine, In Between Altered States, Horror, Sleaze & Trash, Negative Suck, Graffiti Kolkata, Danse Macabre, The Plebian Rag, Full of Crow, Fashion For Collapse, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Clockwise Cat, Sein Und Werden, Milk Sugar, The Medulla Review, Counterexample Poetics, Heavy Bear, Indigo Rising, Widowmoon, etc. In the past year he has authored a number of chapbooks, including 'The Gathered Bones', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'Final Fragments', (Calliope Nerve Media), & 'The Death-Streaked Air' (Virgogray Press), 'Debris', (Erbacce-Press) & ‘The Rapacious Night‘, (Calliope Nerve Media), 'Unto Naught', (Erbacce-Press). A longer collection of poems, 'Attributes', is forthcoming from 'Desperanto' in 2011.

Untitled

A blood-stained eye
Subtle callings from distance/ nowhere
Back-held where the sky-womb lapses
Extracted fingernails of the night/ lapse again
A severed tongue of…
Birthed verandas of absences silences
Intricate
Walls lapped clean of excreta
Chalice clear speech/ never of the sun

--Michael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976) His work has appeared in various print and online zines, including Carcinogenic Poetry, The Recusant, Sex & Murder Magazine, In Between Altered States, Horror, Sleaze & Trash, Negative Suck, Graffiti Kolkata, Danse Macabre, The Plebian Rag, Full of Crow, Fashion For Collapse, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Clockwise Cat, Sein Und Werden, Milk Sugar, The Medulla Review, Counterexample Poetics, Heavy Bear, Indigo Rising, Widowmoon, etc. In the past year he has authored a number of chapbooks, including 'The Gathered Bones', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'Final Fragments', (Calliope Nerve Media), & 'The Death-Streaked Air' (Virgogray Press), 'Debris', (Erbacce-Press) & ‘The Rapacious Night‘, (Calliope Nerve Media), 'Unto Naught', (Erbacce-Press). A longer collection of poems, 'Attributes', is forthcoming from 'Desperanto' in 2011.
http://www.erbacce-press.com/#/michael-mcaloran/4542338472

dialogues

--Orchid Tierney is an Aotearoa/New Zealand avant-garde writer and a freelancer in the television industry (usually within the art department). Her work has appeared in numerous on and offline publications including And/Or (US) Otoliths (AUS) and Takahe (NZ). She edits Rem Magazine.

Detroit's Forever Mayor

this is the ass of America
the little dark man says to me
sweeping his hand across the skyline
as if trying to dissipate the city like smoke

the gutter behind us quietly sucks down
last night's rain, almost loud enough
to drown out the whirring of industry
surrounding us on all sides
like millions of beetles marching across wax paper

this is my domain, my dream
the little dark man whispers

looking down at him I see
a shriveled and surreal Joe Louis
presiding over his city and unable to smile

--Shawn Misener lives and writes in Michigan.

Letterist

--Orchid Tierney is an Aotearoa/New Zealand avant-garde writer and a freelancer in the television industry (usually within the art department). Her work has appeared in numerous on and offline publications including And/Or (US) Otoliths (AUS) and Takahe (NZ). She edits Rem Magazine.

Loose Cage

you happy smiling pyramid
slimy rhyming crayon
you wordy chirpy bird
thick book across the face

animation mouse
dressed in barbeque sauce
jellybean droppings
watermelon shit

monkey imagination
drunk on spinal fluid

--Shawn Misener lives and writes in Michigan.

One More Place To Be

I'm watching the giants
weave through sycamores
like they did three thousand years ago

they stomp around and sing
until they sprout erections
the size of space shuttles

with these erections
they dispose of their enemies
and bellow for the women

--Shawn Misener lives and writes in Michigan.

Untitled

the sky, bruised and battered from a bar fight with dawn,
bent down
and pressed his fingers
against the gushing moonlight at his temple

he watched the waves stumble into the harbor

and turned a tattered grin to the children
tossing in bed
threw his arms above his head

and said, “sad little ones, where
do you think you can get away to in one goddamn lonely night

to where dreams dust up dawn and run rampant
to where dreams turn up the engines, rev past fucking reality?”



so sun, swift and sober, scooped the children into her warm arms
and clenched to her belly,
purred them awake

--Frances Saux is a writer from San Francisco who enjoys reading and watching the fog.

Calliope Nerve Interview Series: Keith Pascal

Keith, tell us about your book Coin Snatching: The Reputation Builder? Why is it important?

It covers two topics and appeals to two audiences: Coin Snatching teaches, of course, how to snatch and switch one coin for another in a participant's hand, but it also explores subtle ways of building one's reputation. If you have ever wanted to shine in your "group," this is the way to do it without bragging. You won't even come across as a showoff.

The book appeals to magicians (jugglers and bartenders, too), and it also helps martial artists and fighters. There are chapters on how to speed your punches (through coin snatching and other drills), and also a chapter or two on how to eliminate "telegraphing." A telegraph is an extra movement that tells your opponent what you are about to do.

I'd say that's pretty important, wouldn't you? :-)

(Sorry for the pitch.)




You're an experienced magician and martial artist. Can you tell us about both?

I have other hobbies, but these turned into professions, at various points in my life. In each case, I had some pretty fantastic mentors ... an original Bruce Lee student, one of the top ten card magicians in the world in the 1970s, and others.

Now, as a writer in both genres, I get to rub elbows with the best martial artists (practical-application fighters) and the most skilled magicians.

What inspires you to write?

I could take the easy way out and just say that I have always wanted to be a published author of books, which is true, but it's not the whole picture:

Actually, nowadays, it's more about my desire to teach. I was a high school teacher for 12 years, and a very successful one, if I might be so bold as to opine. Unfortunately, teaching conditions kept getting worse; at one point, I had 237 students.

Note: In one of my classes, there were 51 students, but only 36 desks. The principal came in to watch the class, at my request. He said I was doing a great job teaching foreign language. I felt more like a babysitter. And at home, spending just 2 minutes per student paper would keep me up until 1 am, nightly. I'm not complaining, but it was grueling, and I had a toddler that I wanted to interact with, more than teaching would allow.

After writing my first book, while still teaching, I realized that I could teach in a much larger "classroom" with books. It became an opportunity to reach many more than the 237 that I dealt with almost daily.

How did you become an author? How many books have you written?

I tend to write about what I know: I started there. I understand martial arts, and I understand magic. In both genres, I feel that I have something unique to offer.

Once I started hunt-and-pecking the keyboard, I never looked back.

How many books have I written? Difficult question.

Some are out of print, like Wrist Locks in hardcover (collector's edition, now ... not worth what it sells for on Amazon), and The Punch Papers. And I have a ton of smaller ebooklets ... and maybe 1700 articles, overall.

Here's a small blurb that I included with a recent query to a literary agent:

In print, I have Control Your Fear: A Guide For Martial Artists (soft cover, 2010), Wrist Locks: From Protecting Yourself to Becoming an Expert -- Revised and Updated (soft cover, 2008), Tiptoeing to Tranquility: The Parable for Finding Safety and Comfort in Dangerous Times (soft cover, 2006), and Coin Snatching: The Reputation Builder (hardcover, 2005).

I am also the author of several ebooks -- End the Fight with One Hit (2009), The Punch eCourse (Five Volumes, 2007), Secrets of Teaching Martial Arts More Effectively, (2005). Other current self-defense titles and a list of published magic projects are available on request.

I have built platforms in both the worlds of magic and martial arts. I write and edit one of the longest-running, martial-arts newsletters online (Martial Arts Mastery). There are over 43,000 subscribers to my martial-arts and magicians lists.

Also, you’ll find hundreds of my articles published all over the Net. For example, ezinearticles.com, arguably the most influential article directory, has posted over 300 of my articles. Some have been published in off-line magazines, too.




What techniques do you use to market yourself and your books?

I market mostly to my lists; so, I spend a lot of time list building. I write articles, and also post little how-to videos on Youtube and other video sites. I also distribute free ebooklets that have occasionally gone viral. These martial-arts "teasers" have links pointing to my sales pages.

I also spend a little time with Search Engine Optimization, and even less time posting to discussion fora.

I should do more ... getting better at it, every day.

What tips do you have for those wanting to be full time authors, etc?

Build a platform. Get the audience first. Find out what your readers are hungry for, then give it to them.

Make sure your genre is big enough to support you. For example, writing books only about collectible toys that feature "The Cat in the Hat" might not make you the kind of living you'd want. You might have to expand your expertise to all toys in the Dr. Seuss Theme. And expanding into other toy genres might help in the long run, too.

It's a fine, and fun, line between choosing too narrow of a topic and too broad of one.

Why do you write?

They say to do what you love, and the money will follow. Well, I love to figure out the best ways to teach people "how." It doesn't matter "how-to what." I just want to explore the best way to help others achieve a particular goal.

Writing seems to be the answer.

I also write to entertain. I'd really like to get some fiction published, too. Unfortunately, after over 100 queries, some bites, and one famous agent who never got around to pitching the manuscript to editors, my juvenile fiction is back in the drawer.

Still, I am not one to give up. I'll try with another manuscript ... maybe in the Fall.

Define success.

My first goal was to build an audience of over 10,000 subscribers. Now, I have 43,000.

My next goal was to get more than three books in print — accomplished, and still writing.

My current goal is to earn enough with my writing to get my wife out of teaching. When I accomplish that, I'll have reached my "next level of success."

Then onward and upward.

What's on your recommended reading list?

All my books, of course. Just kidding ... sort of (depending on your interests).

In the world of writing and self publishing, I like Peter Bowerman.

For serious magicians, I like anything Lee Asher. I am also a fan of Aaron Fisher's Paper Engine. Add Michael Ammar and David Regal into the mix and you have a fun set of books to provide hours of practice.

In the area of martial arts, I like some of the books by Loren Christensen and anything edited by or written by John Little.

Actually, I read about four to five books a week, including business books, so it's hard to make specific recommendations without knowing someone's interest.

How do you feel about publishing/reading tech today? (i.e. Blogging, ebooks, LULU, on demand publishing, I-Pad... etc.) How do you feel technology effects readers and publishers? Will e-books replace the real thing?

I haven't jumped on board Kindle or Nook yet, but I have been selling ebooks on CD-ROM through Amazon for years. From my sites, I sell more downloads than printed books, even though I prefer to have real paper in my hot little hands.

If you ask me if I am Team Nook or Team Book, I am definitely Team BOOK ... but I do keep a few ebooks loaded on my ipod.

Blogging? I have a blog (kerwinbenson.com). Truthfully, I think there are a lot of people who have been told to create a blog, but don't really have anything to say. The Internet is a world full of self-proclaimed experts.

Note: I have bowed out of many a group online, because we were all experts. Nobody wanted to learn; they (we) all wanted to lend opinions to others. Ugh.

Why is the small press important?

It keeps me in business.

For example, I couldn't find representation for Tiptoeing to Tranquility: The Parable for Finding Safety and Comfort in Dangerous Times. So, I self published it.

Now, I bet there are a few companies that wish they had the rights ... to pitch it to police department community programs ... to offer instruction to mothers and daughters ... and to provide an inexpensive gift to martial artists who want to give something to help keep their non-martial-arts loved ones safe.

For me, small publishing and self publishing are what keep me afloat.

Do you consider yourself prolific?

Okay. :-)

Believe in writer's block?

Not at all. I'm serious.

I sit down everyday, and I write. It doesn't matter if it's good or crap; it can be edited later.

My mother once berated me, when I said that I wanted to be a writer. I think I was 16 years old. She said, "You don't want to be a writer. Writers write. If you wanted to be a writer, you'd write!"

She was write ... I mean ... "right."

Now, I love it. The act of writing really is an old friend.

What's next for Keith Pascal?

This summer, I am branching out into two genres ... one is dog training, with a twist.
The other is ... a secret. Both will explore mixed media.

I'm also working on more magic books ... one is a parable.

I'm still writing martial arts ... the next one has some "Keith Variations" on three martial-arts principles. I've never seen these variations anywhere else, before.

And I'd like to find an agent for some "bigger audience" manuscripts that I have.

Vermillion

She mourns alone

beneath a wall of
etched glass &
watercolor angels

Her celestial whispers
h u m

as

the iridescent aureole of candles
i l l u m i n a t e s
her shrunken silhouette

She folds her hands in prayer

Freed from painted eyes
a muddied tear
crawls

downward

lingering
frozen between
two vermilion lips

--Sandra Ketcham currently lives in Orlando, where she works as a full-time freelance writer and editor. She is pursuing her degree in psychology and spends her free time working with autistic children and their families. Her poetry is recently published or forthcoming in Yes, Poetry, Psychic Meatloaf, Cherry Blossom Review, and others. Sandra has a strong aversion to llamas.

Submerge

Fraud. You pull up a chair, hang your
heavy brown shoes over the edge.
There's a rattle inside your head, a
clanging & clunking thump-rustle that
drowns out what I've said.

Bits of ceiling hang from my lashes,
tiny styrofoam teeth knocked loose by my
upstairs neighbor's boots. You never ask about my
evening. You say "let me tell you what I did tonight."

I spend my nights in the closet,
biting my lip, rearranging. For you. I
move this part of me left and that part right. For you. I
bang and drum those dangling parts of me back in,
those parts that curl my lips down when no one is around.

--Sandra Ketcham currently lives in Orlando, where she works as a full-time freelance writer and editor. She is pursuing her degree in psychology and spends her free time working with autistic children and their families. Her poetry is recently published or forthcoming in Yes, Poetry, Psychic Meatloaf, Cherry Blossom Review, and others. Sandra has a strong aversion to llamas.

Galway

Mossy hat, disheveled
hangs low on wide eyes that
sigh over burgeoning

cracks. Brick limbs colored with
ashes dig into dead earth
that once cradled flowers.

Beneath cracked toes, sunken
stone steps & gaping graves
moan ovals, suggesting wind

where none exists, &
starving. The past obscures
the tangerine sky. It shivers
   
    singed
             sullied
                      slattern

--Sandra Ketcham currently lives in Orlando, where she works as a full-time freelance writer and editor. She is pursuing her degree in psychology and spends her free time working with autistic children and their families. Her poetry is recently published or forthcoming in Yes, Poetry, Psychic Meatloaf, Cherry Blossom Review, and others. Sandra has a strong aversion to llamas.

a lingering-- aftertaste

and if I
could, I'd pop
out the
balls of my eyes.
I'd empty my
sockets, I
would believe you.
I squint. I
dilate, blink
I press
clear film to
their concavity.
I prop the
hinges, screw
and unscrew. I
suspend the lids,
but still. and
if I could
I would do,
differently.

--Lyla Abi-Saab is a studying writer currently living in Hampton, Virginia. Lyla has poetry and short stories pending in Kerouac's Dog Magazine, The Camel Saloon, and WEIRDYEAR.

Pandoraing

10:01 is a numerical palindrome.

Living on dried apricots
a dollar a box
from the chain drug store
at Vandos and Fifteen,
the roue character
shuffles
curtains of snow
between a row of pebbles
and the dead calico cat's paws

frogs from the bayou
fall into the planters of fuschia
a long way from Louisiana
and the wedding
will be held
at a motel
right off
the closest
state route.


No marmalade
ever again.

--Mike Cluff is a full time English and Creative Writing instructor at Norco College in southern California. His eigth book of poetry Casino Evil was published in 2009 from Petrogylph Books.

Eye to Eye

The vulture tries
to stare me down
and away
from the carrion
on the White's sideyard.


It will not win
it is only a matter
of principle
to me.

And in the auditorium
Seth recites something blandly
from either
"The Tempest" or
"All's Well that Ends Well."

It does not count
either way.

--Mike Cluff is a full time English and Creative Writing instructor at Norco College in southern California. His eigth book of poetry Casino Evil was published in 2009 from Petrogylph Books.

August outside Altadena, Amarillo and Aliquippa

Beavers
armadillos, possums
all are equal targets
on the asphalt trails.

Western Pennsylvania
Southern California
panhandled
Texas
tires crunch
slice open just as effectively
always as well.

Lobster ravioli
antipasto
gazpacho
the same eating
on the tar cola-dark passageway.

Death, life
sleep
look blank
mulled
peaceful
on a pathway
time only ends.

Soma animals
inhabit woods, glades
highways
forever,
maybe so can I.

August outside Altadena, Amarillo and Aliquippa

Two Pieces From John Swain

Green Windows

Green rain in green windows
I hid as the morning darkened
allowing an easy sleep to heal
the pain that waking scraped
against the black glass of my tongue.
Air remained on the cool sheet
as the salts dissolved in a bowl
of leaves and peel and flowers,
your face escaped the vapors
I breathed upon the changing mirror.
A thunder silenced the wind chimes
as vials kept the droplet water
like a hollow bone pipe to light,
and now smoke layers with sky
as I waited for your rose voices.


Instead of the Evening

Mist like a white body
traveling the clay road
I pass from the failing.
A yellow hammer screeches
the theology of resurrection
against dripping green trees,
though you remain nameless
beside the dying fawn,
I had no incantation to call.
I tried to say goodbye
in a heavy coat of rain
as frogs bubbled in the mud.
And perhaps it is better
to be alone in the morning
instead of the evening,
I floated candles on the sea.


--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.

{Jessica}

you left me

betrayal fires

the cloudless day

forced

together

by your burns

crossed

like wrists

in a straitjacket

shame

the passing violence

comes hunched

& bent, &

the stench of saliva

I grow familiar

jessica & I

here a theresea

there here is theresa here

so

piss yourself,

yes, that’s nothing

we bought one hundred & fifty

razor blades from

a poundshop

why do I need so many?

to clean

your arms

you were never beautiful

your father named you

ill

--Steven J Fowler has published poetry with nearly 100 journals & ezines and had chapbooks published by Oystercatcher, Arthur Shilling, Zimzalla & the Red Ceilings amongst others. He edits the weekly interview series Maintenant for 3am magazine and is the author of two collections of poetry, Red Museum (with Knives Forks and Spoons press) and Fights (with Veer press). He is a former professional fighter and a current employee of the British Museum. www.sjfowlerpoetry.com.

{Theresa}

 theresa my sight

we met on saint walpurgis night

in the oak, for at least an hour

the curfew, look to me

no other did you see

only our eyes need sight

I need not the colour

let it be night

rub cardamom in my eyes

inject artemisia into the iris

bulge my lens with flax & anise

now there is no oak that is greeted by the sun

& in which war would you not leave me?

--Steven J Fowler has published poetry with nearly 100 journals & ezines and had chapbooks published by Oystercatcher, Arthur Shilling, Zimzalla & the Red Ceilings amongst others. He edits the weekly interview series Maintenant for 3am magazine and is the author of two collections of poetry, Red Museum (with Knives Forks and Spoons press) and Fights (with Veer press). He is a former professional fighter and a current employee of the British Museum. www.sjfowlerpoetry.com.

Incoherent Ranting #28

Everything is a mystery in hushed tones,

as my words get turned around,

wanting just a private place to open up the purple bottle.

You are a boys’ game played by men,

appearing to wait in quiet anticipation,

we are confronted by our alienation with the past.

You live in your own circle of hell, a city of hustlers,

beggars and junkies and pimps and runaways,

before any sales pitch had been made.

You say that you are putting the finish on your training,

I know better than to believe in your lies,

you are still looking for your next warm, soft, and sentimental sacrifice.

You are gifted, needy, and quirky, creamily full-bodied spendiferousness,

as a particular tradition, embossed and emboldened,

reflecting a pervasive change in our culture and in us.

You are sacred because of your physical prowess and anatomical perfection,

you walk as if you carry the seed of life for the whole universe,

the fallen angel and the temptress moon together in you.

You raise questions about your ownership,

you want to know if you or I own your body,

when innocence and sin were both respected.

Suddenly, your body was lawless,

you could leave me and everyone else,

without permission, without crossing the Rubicon.

Your ethereal reach longer than your pin-wheeling skirt,

each a troubled cog in the collective,

all of us hurt and hopeful faces.

--Martin Leonard Freebase lives in Dubuque, Iowa with his wife, daughter, and a black and white cat named “Daisy.” Martin’s work is solidly based on the concept of poetry as a social construction. Through our interactions with others, we create and recreate meanings that allow us to make sense out of a chaotic world full of contradictions. Martin considers the art of writing poetry as one small way of collapsing the confusion of experience into more meaningful patterns of social thought.  You can find more of Martin’s thoughts at: http://martinfreebase.blogspot.com.

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People say that without scientific rigor we learned nothing from the plague. Our parents did learn not to let us play among the bodies, but I wanted to learn something else. I was young enough to know that fear was beside the point, and old enough to care what would happen to my toes, and I found that rotting flesh was sweeter than nostalgia and discovered that was the last lesson I’ll never need to know.


--Jonathan Penton is the editor of www.UnlikelyStories.org and Unlikely Stories of the Third Kind. He has written four chapbooks of poetry: Last Chap (Vergin' Press, 2004), Painting Rust and Blood and Salsa (Unlikely Books, 2006) and Prosthetic Gods (New Sins Press, 2008). He is standoffish to the point of being unfriendly, which might be why he's so often accused of being an undercover cop, which confuses him because he'd expect undercover cops to be really ingratiating but he doesn't actually know.

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You want to sing of salt and water
and the death of your personal sun
but the dust is rising from the horizon

and the sky around you has turned to brown
while the noon becomes something solid
the streets are emptying, the motorbikes seek shelter
and your skin is stung by less perfect needles
and your eyes have been shocked dry
and the trees are whipped about like your little asshole heart
so you swallow dust into your lungs and tell yourself it’s ashes
to try this sort of sacrament, to summon a less remote god

--Jonathan Penton is the editor of www.UnlikelyStories.org and Unlikely Stories of the Third Kind. He has written four chapbooks of poetry: Last Chap (Vergin' Press, 2004), Painting Rust and Blood and Salsa (Unlikely Books, 2006) and Prosthetic Gods (New Sins Press, 2008). He is standoffish to the point of being unfriendly, which might be why he's so often accused of being an undercover cop, which confuses him because he'd expect undercover cops to be really ingratiating but he doesn't actually know.

Hepatoscopy

There is sweat across his nipples
  where his hair performs a cross
    there is come in the small of his back
There are idols in the bedroom
   there are borrowed gods
     there are pantheons of everything we lack
                                                                  And I am swimming in a long-forgotten lover
                                                                  that resides in another person's eyes
                                                                  And I am seeing an empty-pastured future
                                                                  in the honey of the stretch marks on your side

--Jonathan Penton is the editor of www.UnlikelyStories.org and Unlikely Stories of the Third Kind. He has written four chapbooks of poetry: Last Chap (Vergin' Press, 2004), Painting Rust and Blood and Salsa (Unlikely Books, 2006) and Prosthetic Gods (New Sins Press, 2008). He is standoffish to the point of being unfriendly, which might be why he's so often accused of being an undercover cop, which confuses him because he'd expect undercover cops to be really ingratiating but he doesn't actually know.  This piece was previously  published in Mezcla: Art and Writing from the Tumblewords Project.

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There’s a child standing atop the caliché skyscraper
Buried under a century of Simon and Garfunkel
He meant to come down, but there’s a sun and a grandfather and he can’t remember why he came

The cameras are rolling, the receivers are throwing
           beads and poppers and rivers of whiskey and Phoenix
And the glare from the streetlamps burns Ohio River bridges
           ’til the tenderizing blast
           turns Old Miss into glass

He says if luck were a lady no one would care that you’re crazy
           because betrayal of fact is the essence of memory and the
           tunnels through town always seemed like a maze to me
           even when I still cared where they go

So the Contras get desperate, Princess Di is protesting
Stevie Nicks and fireworks and strip-mining Oasis and we’re stretching these metaphors
like ambulance-chasers trying to find truth in a song
                                                                            knowing four-fourths time is wrong

We look back to the child on the school lunch skyscraper
He’s learned to flow fresh and roll blunts without fingers
He’s learned thousands of modes of subcultural self-expression
                                                                                        He still classifies by race
                                                        and he’s preaching all the wisdom he never remembered
                                                        he interrogates his rhymes with waterboarding he learned from
                                                        the alliteration on porn mags

So he’s kept distracted from the son and the grandfather
who are melting the jello foundation of the skyscraper
lest heavy metals allow him to avoid the decision to be or not to be
                                                                           like Esterhaz watching Buffy

--Jonathan Penton is the editor of www.UnlikelyStories.org and Unlikely Stories of the Third Kind. He has written four chapbooks of poetry: Last Chap (Vergin' Press, 2004), Painting Rust and Blood and Salsa (Unlikely Books, 2006) and Prosthetic Gods (New Sins Press, 2008). He is standoffish to the point of being unfriendly, which might be why he's so often accused of being an undercover cop, which confuses him because he'd expect undercover cops to be really ingratiating but he doesn't actually know.

Every Day of Her Life

Once she ate from the tree of good and evil knowledge
and sometimes she knows which she prefers
once she played a karmic agent on a dance floor with a handgun

She laughs at your professions of sentience
she wants to feed your soul to her dog
she laughs at the Negro nurses who don’t scare her in the slightest
                                             ’cause they’re
                                  looking for meaning in profits and pendants
                                  or the doctors, the patients, her memories made of metaphor
                                  the gibberish with which she speaks forthright

Her roommate is terrified, her son still needs to suffer
though she’s told them that it’s just a waste of time
so she learns to hunt for robin eggs and fling them from her branches
to prepare us for when we’ve lost our minds

--Jonathan Penton is the editor of www.UnlikelyStories.org and Unlikely Stories of the Third Kind. He has written four chapbooks of poetry: Last Chap (Vergin' Press, 2004), Painting Rust and Blood and Salsa (Unlikely Books, 2006) and Prosthetic Gods (New Sins Press, 2008). He is standoffish to the point of being unfriendly, which might be why he's so often accused of being an undercover cop, which confuses him because he'd expect undercover cops to be really ingratiating but he doesn't actually know.

One Stark Trumpet Peals

At eve, old melodies unwomb,

old ragings wake

as crones,

stringy hair unbunned,

creep downstairs

to supper on a loin.

As they feed,

their fingernails

roll back

and so they gravitate

or, better, crawl

toward the dawn,

for in the din

that eddies in each ear,

they can hear

one stark trumpet peal

as they creep

toward the sun

a final time,

drawn by

ancient echoings.

--Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has had poems published in Calliope Nerve and other publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa.