Muse Thing: The Calliope Nerve Weblog

Dear Readers, Contributors, Friends

2011-08-25T01:31:00.000-04:00

With a heavy heart, I want to let you know that we have lost our dear friend Nobius Black, editor and producer of Calliope Nerve. In his honor and memory, I will keep the content up here as long as possible because I think he would have wanted it to stay and for the words he loved to be held in the places he gave them.
Nobius Black, Matthew, was a giving man with a generous heart, who touched many of us in different ways. Many of us were part of his creative world, his writing and publishing world, and we know how important this work was to him. For those of us lucky enough to call him editor, collaborator, friend... here's hoping that we can take pause and remember what he gave us and honor it accordingly.
When I think back on what he had to say about so many of you and the work that he was proud to include here, I wish that I could share his thoughts now, to you each- personally. Please know that he had so much respect and admiration for your work, and truly believed in our community of independent presses.
Thank you for your support of Calliope Nerve.
Lynn Alexander

Song for the Postmodern Void

2011-08-12T21:35:00.002-04:00

I am playing possum,
indoctrinated by shareholders,
and corporate elite,
whose aim is to devour my soul.

I am alien to this body;
this fleshy machine of wilderness.

I serve, as a cog in their bomb,
which aims to destroy everything alive.

Humanity has adopted
this system of order
and exploitation,
which serves to maintain
the illusions it creates.

--Craig Shay lives on Long Island, NY and will be attending College of Old Westbury in the fall. He is currently working on his first poetry book titled Birth of Music. Samples of his published work are available at www.craigshay.wordpress.com.

Aftermath

2011-08-11T21:30:00.003-04:00

Bodies lie
beside each other –

Eyes peer up
through stony rubble,
glassy and dilated –

Staring through
a doorway,
towards the future –

Dreaming
of a colorful afterlife –

Steady pallid eyes,
concentrate
on the kaleidoscope
of possibilities
as they pass –

--Craig Shay lives on Long Island, NY and will be attending College of Old Westbury in the fall. He is currently working on his first poetry book titled Birth of Music. Samples of his published work are available at www.craigshay.wordpress.com.

Chain Gang

2011-08-10T21:25:00.004-04:00


Let down
               that curtain,
which shrouds
                       reality –
 

Reveal
           these chains
around our
                  heads,
feet,
       and wrists –
 

We are
            incarcerated here,
in comfortable
                    cages,
which lull us
                 passively
into a state
               of acquiescence –
 

Why is it,
                that the circus
distracts us so?


Why is one's soul
                          exchanged
for a handful of ash?

--Craig Shay lives on Long Island, NY and will be attending College of Old Westbury in the fall. He is currently working on his first poetry book titled Birth of Music. Samples of his published work are available at www.craigshay.wordpress.com.

Rainbows

2011-08-09T12:54:00.003-04:00

Surprisingly, rainbows do not gush out of my ass
or any other orifice of my body
while I ride my unicorn Pony Girl to candy-coated Heaven
I smell like cigarettes and ride the decaying
public buses that usher out their very own shitty rainbow of
pollutants and I pop my lithium like candy corn so that
I don’t actually see unicorns strolling in the back alleys of
The local AA Social Club

Maybe it will pour down rain and wash my sins away
and a rainbow will shine brightly in the sky while
a Goodyear Blimp cuts across it,
magically giving my morning coffee a hint of pumpkin spice
and breaking my smoking habit for good
good sport I am I’ll have started a fitness program
for preteens who believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster

No, rainbows do not gush out of my ass
or any other orifice of my body
while I tiptoe through the tulips
or in my case the thorn bushes
I prefer stargazing on LSD
and miniature people collecting.

--Kevin Ridgeway is a writer currently based in Southern California in a shady bungalow with his girlfriend, one eyed cat and old books. He studied creative writing at Goddard College and Mt. San Antonio College, at the latter of which he won the 2011 Writer's Day Award for prose with special citations for his poetry. He has most recently been published in The Left Coast Review and Insomnis Veritas, and is anticipating two forthcoming publications in Breadcrumb Scabs and Larks Fiction Magazine.

Verge

2011-08-08T22:10:00.001-04:00


for Kathleen
The long dark tunnel
                ends
           in a pinprick 
                of light.  [double space]
Deadly heliotrope pulls me
in,
                too vast to slide
                through the aura
           calling out,  [double space]
                My own Siren,
sinking
           my heart
           with her dulcet tones
           & echoes of ache.  [double space]
I give in to the black  
               endless
           ether drops
               on either side.

--Suzanne Grazyna is a stage actor and poet in California. Though she may actually be a robot.

Oo Triptych

2011-08-07T22:09:00.002-04:00

1.
What doesn't kill us makes us stranger. Cracked hatched and eyelashless. We
need aviation here. I am fearful of heights. [double space]
He reaches across many streets, arm outstretched , to where I sleep. I am
carinate now. There are 3 fresh eggs in my nest. I didn't feel a thing. [double space]

2.
Clippings scatter; they spot the down cover. Wings flutter
with fanfare but I am no angel.
We aren't meant to be caged. Our path has been laid. [double space]
He breaks my ovaries with skill. Warms the skillet
to scramble my yolks. Mitosis with one hooked bite.
I consume my future. My beak is pure. [double space]

3.
It didn't make it.
The fledgling fetus.
Fresh from the shell.
Pushed.
Or fallen.
Carrion for vultures. [double space]
And I knew how it felt.
And my swollen heart broke.
And I saw myself.
And I knew what I was.
And I buried it in the hole
the vultures left in my throat [double space]
when they ate my song.

--Suzanne Grazyna is a stage actress and poet from California. Though she may actually be a robot.

Vicodin Flytrap

2011-08-06T22:04:00.001-04:00

Bitter pills. The bleating the bleeding the beading of sweat like dew. The ache to drip into the sweet abyss. Seal me shut, airtight, hermetic hermit in a hydro poison bath. Bathed in shivers. Awash in the tremors of desire of on-fire lust of needing to trust the hand willing to sew the lips shut. The prick of tiny unicorns with barbed wire treats that ping the meat in twitching legs. Needles like leaves dipped in sticky saliva lick my fleshy fat clean. Unhinged by twin horns by a devil's trick by a knight in nepenthe armour. Lancet on his white steed. He's found the Holy Grail. Swallow whole. Deep in the throat. Dissolve into bleating cells bleeding cells beating carnivorous bitter cells eating me complete.

--Suzanne Grazyna is a stage actress and poet in California. Though she may actually be a robot.

City Surgery

2011-08-05T21:41:00.003-04:00

The imbalance of ancientness hangs heavy overhead-
dangling steel verticals, whom distilled in the ether
of new dead air, are wrapped by sterility:
the night smog wound illuminated by neon billboards
they cut through the alley night streets with precision,
slicing the bulbous tumour from her roots

--Jack Little (b. 1987) is a British writer who currently lives in Mexico City. When not writing poetry he edits The Ofi Press magazine and manages the Mexican national cricket team. You can find out more information about both of these ventures at: www.theofipress.webs.com and www.mexicocricketassociation.com.

The heart is five minutes long

2011-08-04T21:33:00.001-04:00

Between a lung sucked back through love into regret of accepted lust.

On a blackberry-tasting tongue.

At a secret whistle outside the bedroom window
turning to a keening beside the quilt.

From the time of grasping fingers to the time of lowering blankly,

brows drawn black and grass departing you from all sounds

of tender and hardened loved ones.

From the anger at your father.

From the annoyance at yourself, the slamming of an object, the consideration
of cutting edges

peeling forth the red,
like a signal,
an ecstatic meeting–tears beating at the light
like the pulse of the soul–or
a rending,
a covering or an opening,
a faultless disclosure.

--Natalie Caulfield lives in Connecticut with her archaic typewriter and a river creeping up her back yard. Her work has been published at Ink Sweat & Tears webzine and is forthcoming in Penny Ante Feud.

The guest

2011-08-03T21:29:00.002-04:00

I felt the day come
and settle back in
like a gore-full suitcase.
Heavy,
landing on my throat
like the careless step
of a stranger in a stampede:
here are my guts,
quivering with rubber
and electric wire;
my eyes
staring fleshless,
record expired
as old prescriptions.
Not pretty brown, just stark
as a child's horror story
from the dark of my head.
Hardened hands making
a last snatch at fading thought.
And when they tell you
it doesn't matter
say it back
loud
like a magnifying glass.
Like the painting of one.
Out back in the shaded
hollow by my house
it is blowsy and
I feel my own death
nudge gracefully at my skin with
promises of what may be.
Like a cat, urging on bird calls.
Forget wet flesh,
I am lemon cake
and a slow breath;
tea with a vanilla cloud
of oleander.
A pausing swell.
Sleep attractive as the promise of breakfast
and marital love:
the idea of you
all over me,
the idea of me
all over.

--Natalie Caulfield lives in Connecticut with her archaic typewriter and a river creeping up her back yard. Her work has been published at Ink Sweat & Tears webzine and is forthcoming in Penny Ante Feud.

Once Upon a Time

2011-08-02T22:12:00.002-04:00

Trying to get that adrenaline
Pumping; in stride with the beat
Of a drummer that marches within
But refuses to quicken on her feet

And sinks slowly like mellifluous quicksand
Stubbornly; into a hollow abyss
No extrication by Merlin’s magic wand
Or even Prince Charming’s kiss

Not every damsel needs a savior
Distressing; concerned by an unknown plight
That reeks of a sacrilegious flavor
And burns the eyes of foresight

And though this heroine may indeed be raving
She, in the end, must do the saving

--Adina Rosenthal's poetry has recently appeared at The Camel Saloon, vox poetica, Yes, Poetry, and Heavy Hands Ink. Her short story "Succubus-in-Law", will appear in Gus Ginsburg's forthcoming anthology Bride of the Golem. Her thoughts can be found at adinacate.blogspot.com.

Angel Wings

2011-08-01T22:11:00.002-04:00

Angel wings twinkle with hope
Their caress feels electric
Caring for the peripatetic
Transients; helping them cope

By cleansing their wounds with pensive soap
To improve their hopeless aesthetic
Ridding them the label pathetic
Disappointments; removing the rope

That harnesses them to failure
Doomed to repeat past mistakes
Instead, accepting an evanescent cure
Allowing them to eat their cake
And have it to; they will acquire a heart pure
To finally rise proud and remain awake

--Adina Rosenthal's poetry has recently appeared at The Camel Saloon, vox poetica, Yes, Poetry, and Heavy Hands Ink. Her short story "Succubus-in-Law", will appear in Gus Ginsburg's forthcoming anthology Bride of the Golem. Her thoughts can be found at adinacate.blogspot.com.

A Poetic Exorcism

2011-07-31T22:06:00.003-04:00

In order to play lyricist
Like a game of chess
You need a strategy that
Bleeds memories and
Purges the ethereal soul
Of its demons, fears, and
Hesitations as they hamper
Even the best of exorcists

And make sure to exorcise
Through poetic exercise that
Rings out the soul in melodious
Cacophony and chimes a triangle
Of hope, understanding, and
Raw reflection; a dance with lascivious
Passion and a sprint
with modest
Rumination
To lift the
Weights off your back
And build the muscle
Of your soul

For even an exorcism most mellifluous
Requires an introspection, most meticulous

--Adina Rosenthal's poetry has recently appeared at The Camel Saloon, vox poetica, Yes, Poetry, and Heavy Hands Ink. Her short story "Succubus-in-Law", will appear in Gus Ginsburg's forthcoming anthology Bride of the Golem. Her thoughts can be found at adinacate.blogspot.com.

Warmth, much later

2011-07-30T21:45:00.001-04:00

Sense (emotional remorse) without saturation
            sans
deplorable nuances of a deafening cheer.  Dimmed
                                                                                    flood
forgoing anorexic devotion
—thrills upon orated notions
         depicting cross and weight of transgressional circumferences

 

                                    wound of windy springs
clutching role and woven abjurations
premise-lung piercing veil of diligent coverings—
                                    pastel
positional worries highlighting
modular obscenities
delegating toward an ear’s most
anecdotal naïveté.

--Felino A. Soriano (b. 1974) is a case manager and advocate for adults with developmental and physical disabilities. In 2010, he was chosen for the Gertrude Stein "rose" prize for creativity in poetry from Wilderness House Literary Review. Philosophical studies collocated with his connection to various idioms of jazz explains motivation for poetic occurrences. For information, including his 44 print and electronic collections of poetry, over 2,700 published poems, interviews, and editorships, please visit his website: www.felinoasoriano.info.

Sounds of Whispered Highlights

2011-07-29T21:44:00.002-04:00

Framed
                                    angles
                        italicized an
hour’s specialized
                        engagement.
 Of frigid symptoms
            (Winter white
                                    arid
             circumference)
decomposes     entire
                        entities
                  and
      various interpretations
                        of day’s
obvious
                        serialized
abstractions.

Missed Fortune

2011-07-27T21:39:00.003-04:00

Trust manifest

            an articulated
fulcrum of verb and
   delineated
               delirium.  As
home and path re-
        create persona
            of
blatant absence

                        walk of
                    alphabetic
                             maze
ends as     antiquated
fences      broken by
weighted         deliberations.

Move, remove

2011-07-26T21:33:00.007-04:00

erracotta veins
path relevant relayed splayed conceptions of the walker’s
tamed consistencies. 
                                    With

                             appetite attractions hysterical methods

roam systems dis
locate
placeable rhetoric submitted
dialectical swarms of the mind’s compulsive addiction

blend               spasm              interrelated blame toward
constant

abdications.

bodies of the random permissions

2011-07-25T21:30:00.002-04:00

head in the eye of
3rd generational                        pollution
            pontificate       concise interpretational correctness

*
mood and elevated study
notes as studious components
devolve corrupt, and, elongate
stubborn sensitivity

|a|
birth reconfigures familial hearsay
verb as crown
                                explicates scent and moving assumptions
                                    full as thoughtful advantages
derisive upon extractions of an inconsistent philosophy

The Speed at Which My Mind Travels

2011-07-24T21:24:00.001-04:00

accelerated slow motion
      you
are my best friend
                         you silly son of a bitch

with your optical illusions
that lead me
                 carefully
astray
sweetly

    as if you know
exactly
           what it is
that I want

            

                but wish to never attain

Cleansing

2011-07-23T21:21:00.000-04:00

after finishing up
some work in the garden
the serial killer
inserts his hands
below the sink head
to wash off the dirt

-Maxwell Baumbach is a manchild from Elmhurst, IL. He has authored the chapbooks "Suburban Rhythm" (Scars Publications, September 2010) and "You're Welcome" (Alternating Current, March 2011). His first full length collection, "At Age Twenty," is slated for a January 2012 release from unbound CONTENT. In his spare time, Maxwell enjoys watching unhealthy amounts of Sports Center and sleeping.

Taxi Cab Confession

2011-07-22T21:20:00.000-04:00

I saw a taxi that had your name
on its driver side door
and I couldn't help but think
that if it violently collided
with my vehicle and I died
in a fiery blaze that there is
a good chance
that it would probably
be symbolic
somehow

--Maxwell Baumbach is a manchild from Elmhurst, IL. He has authored the chapbooks "Suburban Rhythm" (Scars Publications, September 2010) and "You're Welcome" (Alternating Current, March 2011). His first full length collection, "At Age Twenty," is slated for a January 2012 release from unbound CONTENT. In his spare time, Maxwell enjoys watching unhealthy amounts of Sports Center and sleeping.

The Hand of Friendship

2011-07-21T10:15:00.003-04:00

Now hear this, new neighbor! John and Linda Somerset have decided to combat urban alienation by hosting an open house for the whole cul-de-sac! We’ll be all moved in by Friday; come at six pm. The buffet menu is antipasto, chicken Tetrazzini, cioppino and black-bottom pumpkin pie. Kids and critters are welcome, but remember only the kids are welcome to our pool!

The note was put in the mailboxes of the other six houses in the cul-de-sac. Two of the houses were foreclosures, so long deserted that their “For Sale” signs had been stolen. The third house was occupied by a shift worker with a time conflict. The fourth house was occupied by a devout family who never fraternized outside their own church. The fifth house was occupied by a couple with dander allergies, who had to avoid animals. The sixth house was occupied by a registered sex offender who had to avoid children.

But the open house was not unattended. The city collected mail and circulars from deserted homes, and had no record of a permit for the Somerset pool. Therefore, at six exactly, a process server arrived with a court summons.

--Robert Laughlin lives in Chico, California. Two of his short stories are Million Writers Award Notable Stories, and his novel, Vow of Silence, was favorably reviewed by Publishers Weekly. His website is at www.pw.org/content/robert_laughlin.

Transact

2011-07-20T22:12:00.001-04:00

Come find us tucked within your concrete scapes,
Not flaunting our wares in wild merriment.
Nowadays, we take on different shapes
When we taunt and tease and tempt and torment.
We do not believe we are dangerous
Despite our customers' bleak track record,
And doubtless you have been warned about us,
Labelled more trouble than you can afford.
It is never our intent for your health
To suffer though, for where would we be then?
We are nothing without you and your wealth,
This goblin market in the hearts of men,
And from deep within each the ancient cry
Still resounds loud and clear, 'Come buy, come buy!'

--Ian Chung is Fiction Editor at The Cadaverine. His work has appeared in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Foundling Review, The
Cadaverine and Poetry Quarterly, among others. He was nominated by Camroc Press Review for Sundress Publications’ 2010 Best of the Net anthology. Currently, he reviews for The Cadaverine and Sabotage. Since October 2010, he also edits Eunoia Review, an online literary journal.

The Hidden Word

2011-07-19T22:09:00.001-04:00

Making my way to you
across the room, throbbing
music pulsing, thumping
in time to the beat of
hearts all around, I might
linger awhile and speak
a casual word to
persons unknown to you,
insignificant folk
not worthy of your fears
and jealousies because
there is one thing we share:
a meeting of the eyes
perhaps, or even just
a chance fleeting glance
is enough to be sure.

--Ian Chung is Fiction Editor at The Cadaverine. His work has appeared in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Foundling Review, The
Cadaverine and Poetry Quarterly, among others. He was nominated by Camroc Press Review for Sundress Publications’ 2010 Best of the Net anthology. Currently, he reviews for The Cadaverine and Sabotage. Since October 2010, he also edits Eunoia Review, an online literary journal.

Vitamin C

2011-07-18T22:07:00.000-04:00

I love you like an addict needs a high
To stay afloat, treading water until
The next wave of narcotic numbness breaks
Upon my brain-sands and washes away
The dank detritus that accumulates
Only in your absence. Can you taste me?
For I taste the loss of you, like a blade
Cutting lines on the table, on my tongue.
The tang of blood no longer bothers me,
Shed in brokenness but to heal us whole.

--Ian Chung is Fiction Editor at The Cadaverine. His work has appeared in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Foundling Review, The
Cadaverine and Poetry Quarterly, among others. He was nominated by Camroc Press Review for Sundress Publications’ 2010 Best of the Net anthology. Currently, he reviews for The Cadaverine and Sabotage. Since October 2010, he also edits Eunoia Review, an online literary journal.

TaNka+10: A Generated Experiment

2011-07-17T22:04:00.002-04:00

the scent of mango
is fixed in the memories
of an old people
under an alien sky
trying to build a new life

the scepter of mangrove
is fixed in the memsahibs
of an old pepper
under an alignment skydiver
trying to build a new lifeboat

the sceptre of man-hour
is fixed in the menages
of an old peppermint
under an allegation skylight
trying to build a new lifeline

the schema of mania
is fixed in the mends
of an old percentage
under an allegory skyscraper
trying to build a new lifespan

the scheme of maniac
is fixed in the menials
of an old perception
under an allergy slab
trying to build a new lifestyle

the schemer of manic-depressive
is fixed in the mentalities
of an old perch
under an alley slacker
trying to build a new lifetime

the schism of manicure
is fixed in the mentions
of an old percolate
under an alleyway slag
trying to build a new lift

the scholarship of manifestation
is fixed in the mercenaries
of an old peregrination
under an allocation slander
trying to build a new light

the schoolboy of manipulator
is fixed in the mercies
of an old perfect
under an allowance slap
trying to build a new lighthouse

the schoolgirl of manner
is fixed in the mergers
of an old perforation
under an all-rounder slat
trying to build a new lightning

--Ian Chung is Fiction Editor at The Cadaverine. His work has appeared in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Foundling Review, The
Cadaverine and Poetry Quarterly, among others. He was nominated by Camroc Press Review for Sundress Publications’ 2010 Best of the Net anthology. Currently, he reviews for The Cadaverine and Sabotage. Since October 2010, he also edits Eunoia Review, an online literary journal.

Safe Words

2011-07-16T22:01:00.002-04:00

By now you must admit
Love is an arranging.
We tidy the attics
Of our respective lives
And present them, proudly,
As a fait accompli,
Trusting now everything
Must be pleasing, wholesome,
Fit for our consumption.
And have we not laboured
To learn our lines and play
The parts we were assigned?
There is artistry here,
In the way we choose words
To say or not to say.
Language will protect us
From the things we cannot
Bring ourselves to confront.
Love is our dialogue:
I won’t tell, if you won’t.

--Ian Chung is Fiction Editor at The Cadaverine. His work has appeared in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Foundling Review, The Cadaverine and Poetry Quarterly, among others. He was nominated by Camroc Press Review for Sundress Publications’ 2010 Best of the Net anthology. Currently, he reviews for The Cadaverine and Sabotage. Since October 2010, he also edits Eunoia Review, an online literary journal.

If You Want It To Be Easy

2011-07-14T21:54:00.002-04:00

Don’t shuttershock light back into quarks.
Don’t have staring contests with the man on the moon
reducing him to a high-school nerd of an asteroid
fumbling all over undiscovered space and sky
until he crashes into adolescent galaxies
with all the debonair of a prepubescent black hole.

Don’t challenge the stars to cross their eyes when they don’t have any.
The next time you want to make a wish,
they’ll organize a meteor uprising
as a boycott against falling for you.

Don’t break men in half
when they are made of millions of atoms
and half-lives
and so half
is, in all logical reality, a half-hearted copout.

This universe is in love with disorder,
so why break
when you can be a ball-buster?

Fall together.
Come worldly as they come.

When the world tries to stop you in your tracks,
rewind yourself forward.
Finish in the past tense.
Love like you were dying.
Live as if stopclocks waited on your every gasp and heave
to declare mutiny from mortality.

There are formulas for forever hiding in your fingertips.
Swallow your shortcomings.
Act like you know.

--Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory (a.k.a. Phoenix) is a poet, scientist, editor, activist, life-lover, caffeine-junkie, and connoisseur of all things carpe diem and light. Editor-in-Chief of the online poetry journals Borderline and Anatomy & Etymology, she wants to change your world, one word at a time. Her poetry has appeared in journals including Four and Twenty, Troubadour 21, The Legendary, and Spoken War. For more info, visit http://phoenixpoet.info.

Maps V

2011-07-13T21:50:00.002-04:00

Mondrian life in Maple leaves
Strewn at the entrance of
Wal-Mart, written history in
The aisles and the sand around
A dying man like police tape
Under my pillow, "Dream no evil."
Low-slung bell bottom jeans
With a holster at your hip,
Fire no shots, I've thrown
My condoms to the ground!
I made you into art and all
I got was one more drunk
Pussy at four A.M. Buy
Pesticide, meet me at McDonald's,
Leave the back door unlocked
Mom will be home soon

--Charles Alexander Themar lives in Denton, TX and enjoys malt liquor and soap operas. He will trade a knight for a bishop and hasn't been to the dentist in years, but don't tell anyone that.

Ordinary night

2011-07-12T23:18:00.002-04:00

I wake up in the night and look at you
while you sleep;
if you can paint you will be master,
but now you are masterpiece.
I am watching your back
with the baby’s wrinkles
and that thing that you call hair and I call
fire,
how it falls down on your white neck-line
and you are silent in the white sheets,
I imagine them yellow,
my favorite color,
(Van Gogh’s too),
you breathe slowly and lightly like a swan in the lake,
and I count all the inhalations and exhalations,
I count 537 and
fell asleep.

please,
don’t wake up.

--Peycho Kanev has been writing poetry for the past 10 years. His poems have appeared in more than 400 literary magazines. He is nominated for the Pushcart Award and lives in Chicago. His new poetry collection “Bone Silence” was released in September 2010 by Desperanto, NY.

The way it happens

2011-07-12T23:16:00.001-04:00

To feel it,
to grasp your heart
and to die while you write
poetry
is not so regally like let’s say
kissing untouched beauties
between the sheets.

to listen to Mahler
and after that to throw away
all the symphonies like
garbage.

Summer time,
I kiss the hog
and whisper
good night, darling, good night
child.

--Peycho Kanev has been writing poetry for the past 10 years. His poems have appeared in more than 400 literary magazines. He is nominated for the Pushcart Award and lives in Chicago. His new poetry collection “Bone Silence” was released in September 2010 by Desperanto, NY.

Shadows

2011-07-11T23:15:00.002-04:00

The shadows are thicker near the harbors,
the ships are looking like ghosts,
water runs cool and dry down my sleeve
and the memories are forgotten

They are coming from spaces that I will never see,
where the shadows are not different from the rest,
and my soul is their cargo, their dead weight,
but none of this matters any mor

--Peycho Kanev has been writing poetry for the past 10 years. His poems have appeared in more than 400 literary magazines. He is nominated for the Pushcart Award and lives in Chicago. His new poetry collection “Bone Silence” was released in September 2010 by Desperanto, NY.

Sameness

2011-07-10T23:11:00.002-04:00

I am riding the bus back home
after the 12 hour job;
re-reading Umberto Eco’s –
Foucault's Pendulum
as the bus keep on going
and I notice something;
this guy two seats from me
is reading some book too,
that is okay I say, but he
put his bus ticket between
the pages which he reads
right now, like I do, and
that is something strange
for me, always has been,
a lot of men looking like
me, doing the things that
I do, the same way, the
same manner,
they read the way I read,
the bleed the way I bleed,
they breathe the way I breathe,
they kiss the way I kiss,
and they most probably
copulate the way I do;
I feel strange, frightened,
banal, trivial, hackneyed;
I want this to stop, I don’t
want to be repeated and
unoriginal and yet I know
that this is impossible;
right?
please, tell me,
Jesus?
Muhammad?!

--Peycho Kanev has been writing poetry for the past 10 years. His poems have appeared in more than 400 literary magazines. He is nominated for the Pushcart Award and lives in Chicago. His new poetry collection “Bone Silence” was released in September 2010 by Desperanto, NY.

2:35 A.M.

2011-07-09T23:07:00.004-04:00

The grass is shaking
but not because the storm outside;
it’s filled up with the red ants of
death - so pure, so alive,
and it is 2:35 in the morning
like every god-damned day is
2:35 in the morning,
and I take a peek outside
waiting for some revenge
upon my view on the world affairs;
but nothing is changed:
the red ants are running upon my
drunken arms
heading for my heart,
singing sweet songs of maidens
and children dead at birth,
and the storm outside is quiet now;
and the ants, my ants of death
are running away from me,
screaming with their little mouths:
“There is no soul inside”,
and finally I sleep with no remorse,
the perception of tomorrow lost
like a roach in garbage,
the ants are burning in my dream,
and I am happy for a while,
feeling mortal, too fragile,
so far away without moving a muscle,
sinking into the lie of
the new day.

--Peycho Kanev has been writing poetry for the past 10 years. His poems have appeared in more than 400 literary magazines. He is nominated for the Pushcart Award and lives in Chicago. His new poetry collection “Bone Silence” was released in September 2010 by Desperanto, NY.

Transgressive: A Prelude

2011-07-08T20:53:00.002-04:00

Standing on a stage, swinging the mic stand back and forth in a hypnotic sludgy haze, hair and beard dripping cheap dye from sweaty eyes, cheap stage blood running down a bare chest turning a scrawled prophetic message into a smudged mess of meaningless gibberish, a barked diatribe from a throat burning with Everclear fumes, foreseeing a new front in American Anything.

And none of it was as controversial as a kiss.

--Walter Beck is from Indiana where he is known for his intense poetry, performances and activism, as well as his often bizarre appearance on-stage.

Makeshift Route

2011-07-07T21:42:00.002-04:00

I jump from sentiments to ideas.
Below,

hazard-mania of a populace jolts.
And I yank my gait,
unknown noise blaring from the dementia block.

Glints of figures waver before bleach-saturated trees.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
fused to my arm, (The drugs decaffeinated, yet still pepped)
“Theme acts as plot!” I marvel,

and glares devolve the erratic parking-lot.
I regurgitate diluted nirvana,

thinning out the gout in my temples. But the midday crisis of concentrated slums
mount my city line. jumbling as

a hooded dot shivers up

enlarging,

until the lock of her hair bulges out
against her pale, sweaty face.
She’s oblivious to

the comfort in Morse code,
hissing out from the car alarm on the fritz. Her features full frontal,
I draw back my proximity, eliminating ruminations on thought.
Conversing with her? Think;

kicking a stone with

morose dynamics, down the

fidgety horizon. Fading its last depression.
If I take this detour-- where
construction workers loiter, newspaper funnies spread like wings
at the corner-- then crowding myself is selective:

dissipation.

--Steven Leonardo Clifford was born in 1984, and lives in New York. He’s diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder, and remedies his mental illness by writing poetry and fiction.

Spell Tangent

2011-07-06T21:39:00.001-04:00

White gleams mulch over the black shore,
swishing deceivingly, scaly sand layered back to
ruffles of roofs where

ink soaks the irregular crevices,

observed by the idea of foreign eyes.
narratives tangle.

The mischievous horizon winks itself,
disemboweling the sapphire sky

before a deck of outsiders: (( “Who’s that strange man?” ))
(( “Where?” ))

A dotty figure quivers up among commotion.

(( “There” )), he links his steps through wood-knots,
while humming an unknown song. (( “What Melody is that?” ))
(( “Midnight’s made magical. by all the scars
dancing with concealed conscious.” ))
And the wooden steps went hazy in

the moonlight’s angle. when the dream-catcher is out on bail,
undulating his causal lean. He makes a circle with his finger tip
with a whoop sound effect.

And cackles. (( “I don’t get it?” ))
(( “You know, those psyche secrets we sense…n’ collect.” ))
(( “Yeah, but what now?” )) He snubs out his cigarette
past oblivion to loose tobacco and a massacred filter.
( “They say smoking’s metered damage in
a world of chaos.” ))…)… like the sparks dwindling into the frail dunes
that he glares at,

as if to study.

--Steven Leonardo Clifford was born in 1984, and lives in New York. He’s diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder, and remedies his mental illness by writing poetry and fiction.

Movement

2011-07-05T21:34:00.001-04:00

Misshapen courtyard is amidst
deconstructive sunbeams, corrugating the brick walls,

some students encircle,
their intervals spaced

wide

as dilated pupils. Somber breaths. Wordless cigarette drags.

Thinned youth,
sloth-pace passing

And passing. And passing.
And swigs of spiked coffee

fatigue,
not vitalize.

Persons straggle,
still. The Underground diggings
not so convenient.

The substitute --crackling thru earphones-- is the hyperreal glitz:
an auto-tuned youth. A kid home from boot camp

scrounges thru his pockets as a taxi huffs.

Departing, dust across the road puffs up in wispy silk flows.
That kinetic vibe of an idle field

remains,
once the revelry clears. My city feels rented.

--Steven Leonardo Clifford was born in 1984, and lives in New York. He’s diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder, and he remedies his mental illness by writing poetry and fiction.

Student and Student

2011-07-04T21:29:00.003-04:00

Clustering fragments
circulate a wrecked ideology, functionality

clotted. My indecisive voice cracks,
in this new school stage. What magnets repel,
and does the flipside attract? Which end matters?

Renovation drips to the floor,
by a breached ambience. Whored pensiveness
injects the flickering blue blaze. insinuating white bookshelves,
afloat

among walls of radical waters.
that mutates over my cousin’s face. I move my head crabwise, taken by a

micro-being trip. I scrutinize the room’s framework,
down to each fizzing molecule. Apply reason to the raw blueprint,
or is everything stone cold? Am I manipulative?

“Does your life ever seem.…
unreal?” The ductile windowsill convulses. “No.” Everybody says no.
If I understand otherwise, I negate. She’s never talkative

unless I instigate. We’re muted to the inquisitive show,
spewing chaotic noises.

And I dropped out of duality. My eyes are compromised, intuitively
plucking thoughts, the fetuses actively aborted.

Nothing but neutral ground to cover.

--Steven Leonardo Clifford was born in 1984, and lives in New York. He’s diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder, and remedies his mental illness by writing poetry and fiction.

Calliope Nerve Interview Series: Ron Graham

2011-07-03T21:38:00.017-04:00

Ron, tell us about your books: Stress Free Entrepreneurship and When Things Break. Why are they important?

These are attempts at regaining relevance. I used to have a larger engineering-oriented audience about 15 years ago, and then the Internet changed, and I went in a different direction myself. But I have used them both in classes I've taught, on start-ups and on engineering failures, and while the classes have been well-received, that doesn't necessarily translate into people lining up for the books. It might be that I have to market myself better, and, well, I'm working on it.

You own and operate Clarity Strategic. What does your business do?

Clarity Strategic is a consultancy. I offer basic Web design, social media and overall Internet strategy. It's a start-up, and while I've done good work when the work has been there, like all start-ups it's a bit of a struggle to find the work. Most entrepreneurs will tell you that you must always be "about the grind" to make that business growth happen. And YOU know that's pretty much the life of the author as well, because who is an entrepreneur if not an author?

How does Social Media play into your career?

I think it's worth pointing out that the Internet has given us more opportunities to use our voice, than has ever been available before. With blogging, podcast, vodcast, social media, etc. etc. there are many, many channels for good voices to be heard.

The flip side is, we have to be the good voices, because those same channels are crowded with voices clamoring for attention. With great power comes great responsibility, once again.

Social Media is us, using the Internet to communicate with us in various ways. It's kind of like the culmination of previous social incarnations, like message boards, Usenet, chat rooms, instant messaging, etc. - it's all integrated now. And a major result of that is that you really can't do business the way we used to, not any more. You can't control the message and have potential customers hear only what you want them to - social media and its associated chaos have put paid to all that. Our choice now is this: we know the conversation about us is already happening. Do we want to be PART of it, or not? I, like many others, say "WE DO!!!"

That the Internet has become mostly Social Media doesn't change one thing: we still have to write, and write well. I mean, if we expect to be heard. And as in any other form of writing, business and technical writing - my specialties - only improve in technique through practice.

You write to become a better writer. Knowing this, I'm writing all the time. And I'm making friends online with others who feel this too. Yeah, I'd say I'm prolific. Not like the famous guys like Seth Godin or Chris Brogan or Brian Solis or anyone like that, but I am getting stuff out there, and grinding to get it seen by pairs of eyes.

The great thing about social media is that it offers almost constant inspiration, new ideas every day, new people to question you. And I listen to people: I really try to keep a finger on the pulse not only of social media, but of popular culture - at least, in those areas where I can make a positive contribution.

Do your readers want to understand social media a little better?

Kabani, Shama Hyder. The Zen of Social Media Marketing.

That's a good place - a very good place - to start.

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

I have no books in print. I have these two e-books, along with two others I have taken off the shelf for being outdated. I may be updating them eventually, but there's a lot to do. But I became an author after teaching college writing for several years – I have seen young people who really can't write well, and I've helped them. When they were willing. LOL

I've written several conference papers and articles for non-refereed publications from my life as an engineer. But blogging and guest blogging – and efforts like this – have pretty much replaced that. Blogging is where we publish today, for the most part, and it works well as a knowledge management system. It's a way we can quickly locate our best stuff for collecting into an e-book.

Consider yourself prolific?

Prolific is something like Janet Evanovich, with a slew of detective novels. You become prolific, I think, by finding that niche that people love, and really exploiting it. I have some expertise in some areas, but have not yet really connected with my own audience. They're out there. I just have to find them.

Who or what inspires you to write?

Need. Again, a writer writes knowing he has a voice that must be heard. Why do we feel our voices must be heard? Because there is a need out there going unfulfilled until we are heard.

Why do you write?

I'll give the same answer here: I believe there is a need I can fulfill, and fulfill uniquely.

Believe in writer's block?

Screw writer's block. The world's still turning, and it doesn't feel sorry for me. LOL Seriously, if I can't write, for whatever reason, I do something else for a little while, then force myself to write SOMETHING. Just to get off dead center.

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

So far, I've depended heavily on social media. But that's not nearly enough. I have to do blog trades, and let new audiences see my ability. I have to launch a podcast – I had one ten years ago – and use that to grab new audiences too. And I have to speak at conferences – something I've always enjoyed. But the fact is, you have to give yourself away a lot, to gain the trust and respect that will get others to drop a buck on you.

What advice do you have for authors who want to go full time with their writing?

If others want to write, and market themselves online, they must be made to know that there is no end to the marketing effort. NO days off. So get used to it, get to like it, embrace it. Once you're good at it, then stuff really starts to happen. That's success: when stuff happens.

What's on your recommended reading list?

Well, besides Shama's book above, which I of course recommend, I'm looking at picking up Chris Brogan's Trust Agents, and Brian Solis' Engage – a couple more social media milestones. After that we'll see. I read quite a few graphic novels for pleasure, and have read the Harry Potter books and most of Jane Austen's works again and again.

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've been on the Internet now for 25 years - that's likely to be longer than anyone else you know. And in the early days, it was possible to easily find a niche for what you know. I'm sorry to say that it's not as easy now, and my status as an Internet veteran doesn't make it any easier for me. If anything, I have to always redefine myself to remain relevant in a world filled with such cacophony.

As for whether e-books will replace the real thing, to that I say “not before something else comes along and replaces e-books as we know them today.” But eventually we're going to have some sort of hand-held device (more powerful than an iPad and easier to read than a smart phone), or possibly a personal attachment (more intimate than a wristwatch) that we depend on for just about everything we read. It just won't get here in my lifetime. But not too long after.

Why is the small press important?

Someone has to allow new talent to break in. We don't know whose work is going to SELL until it actually sells. I mean, there's someone great out there, that we can't depend on big, profit-driven publishing houses to find for us. It might be you. It might be me.

What's next for Doctor Ron?

The next thing for me? Maybe I should get to know some of your readers. Let them know how to reach me. I LOVE to talk cross-disciplinary. :-)

Ron can be reached via his website: http:// www.claritystrategic.com.

Ellipsis

2011-07-02T21:17:00.005-04:00

“…” [RefLection]
MelancHoly ellipses trail crestFallen courtesy calls
But they aren’t for you, no they aren’t for you
I   w a n d e r, seeking symPathy;
CircumSpect and offEnded
By cavaLier disCussing
I wonder, was
It worth the
Trouble
Of
D
r
o
p
s
By the wet floor sign in the shining halls of my asylum
Where I’m the only one
Who wanders, who
D
r
i
f
t
s
Around–
Around the passAges–
Around my crystal casements–
And leaves pools of refLection
On my undulating linoleum to HighLight
The rich Scarlet brushStrokes of drops in lacunae

Sailor

2011-07-01T21:29:00.004-04:00

Sickly, feeble,
A sailor scales his Molehill
     Ascending through shifting grass
High blossoms- seared in arid sun
Wilt and weep, swaying lightly
      Golden rays of August
       Shine on his gray hair
        Wheeze, hack and trudge up
             The Mountain he remembers taller
                   The sun he remembers brighter still.
                  Lick cotton mouth, gaze at rooftops:
                  Assets that slaughtered to rise above,
                 Shredded forests to scrap together
            Frayed rope swing to scrap together
         Phallic rebels on rusted white trucks
     Black Swan Lake bows to Capitalism
    Calls in distant memories, missed
  Yellow caps handicap small hands
       Touching upon incorrigibility
              But he never grabbed;
                The sailor only had
                          Left velvet
                                         s
                                       u
                                     n.

--Josh Miller fights inveterate bouts of cynicism, misanthropy, psychosis, and Faustian desire buried just below the cracking surface of his leviathan subconscious. Mentored by a brilliant Vulcan, Josh abandoned his aptitude in mathematics, commerce, and the rational to passionately pursue the splendor of the facetious, the mysterious, and the disturbed.

Tourism

2011-06-29T18:24:00.002-04:00

On any given day school-children are not expected to hang themselves from light-poles. Should the time come, the closing of one's coffin is not uninviting, yet does not necessarily smell of roses, or camphor, or salt-treated lumber. We have codified laws, ratified through the blood of labor, demonstrated by logic without chasm. Here, we press our feet to the ground to feel the future, something to behold!

Your patronage is essential. In spring, baby elk wander the mountain-side caressing eager faces, soliciting donations. Let that face be yours! Let our baby elk caress you!

Our gods, they have names. Know them through your hard work, through unwavering patience in light of collective disaster—reticence and stoicism! They have ample room in their many hearts for your burdens. Availability dependent upon perceived group interest.

There are poets who have burned at the stake. Fear not such punitive action! Though we no longer allow the purveyance of verse, naturally immolation as deterrent is frowned upon.

Our national language is truth-telling. Our national sport is nameless—a distant cousin of modern whale hunting. Imports have long ceased their stronghold on the economy; citizens generate income through the deceptive employment of guilt. In fact, many families live indulgently, and most are able to provide progeny with false organs, often brand-new, so as to stave death's encroachment. Health is a budgetary concern here, and we pride ourselves on the ability to scale its pertinence to the biological level. All newborn infants are covered in protective liquid latex, head-to-toe, and carried home from the birthing-place in steel crates.

Our citizens are frequently thought to be the happiest among similar-range cohorts. Rarely do housewives aged twenty-eight through forty-nine stick their heads in ovens. We count our blissful moments with specially calibrated instruments hanging from carabiners. No one is overlooked. Our suns are brighter here. There is a joy in this place. We watch reruns and expect them to love us back.

--Nathan Blake is an elementary school teacher and recent college graduate. He has a penchant for night sailing and his fiction has been published in some boring and not-so-boring places.

PIZZA PREDATOR

2011-06-28T20:40:00.001-04:00

This galaxy is sometimes more enjoyable soundproof,
a miracle beaming broadly, with piano key teeth,
after rising from a puddle of mud – curtsying to buxom
psychopharmacological ingredients in frilly panties: the mind's
silicon stylus would otherwise be less adjustable.
Useful otherwise only as a leech keyring, landing in your lap
and sucking on your dick
after fumbling with it in your getaway car.

Cardboard embedded with a transistor. The pizza circa 2053.
Now an asthmatic mound flickering with adorable Anime eyes:
TV bodily fluid accrued.
Pellets of clown fossil; albino crusts scattered across the floor of
an antidepressants factory after Robocop had passed through.
Bigfoot kissing in an '80s calisthenics video. 'Now respect my
embrace, bitch!' Resentment's acoustics:
polyvinyl sewn into the Victorian pelvic dashboard.

A microbial free lunch with roots in a large teeming subterranean metropolis,
as enticing to a corkscrew as that small dot marking the convergence of a
staring contest between a car salesman and a soda
vending machine. Predatory.

--Tyson Bley walks dogs, bakes cake, and works as a nuclear physicist for a living. He writes mainly about these experiences. Find him at http://soapstain.blogspot.com/.

MORNING BREATH

2011-06-27T20:39:00.000-04:00

all-nude jail peanut butter broke jittering wooden toy bug anal probe
many uvula kilowatts Wookie uses to wake her
purgatory loves its stereo:
Heineken hates its pleats:
school teachers hate their asscheeks:

it is all cleansed and submerged in the backwash of a very spiritual B-Movie about marsupials

quilted, disposable liver!
what an insane cardio staple-gun!
how the tear ducts remain dry as they shudder!

--Tyson Bley walks dogs, bakes cake, and works as a nuclear physicist for a living. He writes mainly about these experiences. Find him at http://soapstain.blogspot.com/.

DEAN OF DAFT

2011-06-26T20:38:00.001-04:00

Deviled eggs that contain trace amounts of a gypsy curse.

Split in separate directions: a coma growing enough false-positive corners to quilt a sleeping bag at odds with its host's tastes.

And so thanks to an empty, uncharred can of Pepsi sitting atop a heap of ash in the crematorium, the group of mourners are afforded evidence of the existence of portals.

As if the reinvention of antacids weren't enough, the question as to why the crack pipe so suited the goat's mustache was also enthusiastically tackled.

The horrible opinion of the mailman – that my Toyota has all the qualities of an enchanting conversation piece, best moved to the back of the house at the risk of drawing all the city's mailmen.
At the risk of the dandelions in my front yard being savagely trampled.

The myth of the office water cooler debunked.
It is a troll in a white UN helmet.

MC Hammer reworking his entire existence into an impossibly complicated scientific calculator – so that his buttons may be touched, but NOT his soul.

Withdrawal, cold sweats, green bumps erupting all over his neck and back – Ernie longs immediately for his wife's hand's fingers' reinsertion into the holes of the bowling ball; he's addicted to how handsome his wife's hand looks holding the heavy black orb, and cannot imagine seeing it otherwise preoccupied.

Postmortem, played on loop like artfully styled ping-pong.

'Bmeep-bmeep!': for to the brick moved slowly by telekinesis, that sound, made by the Roadrunner overtaking it in a mushroom-stalked plume of dust, sounded heinous.
Sacrilegious.

--Tyson Bley walks dogs, bakes cake, and works as a nuclear physicist for a living. He writes mainly about these experiences. Find him at http://soapstain.blogspot.com/.

SO WHERE EXACTLY DOES MY ASS GO?

2011-06-25T20:36:00.000-04:00

Enamored with the exit wound
the geometrical shape that adorned my room
Cheers to the painkiller, a fluffy minion hardwired to
the grille, psychically imparted by the exterminator
Foam scalp masturbation – wax of the spinal cord
dripping so long on hooks; one detail of the proton-pack omitted
a sort of follicle unplugged
Just an eggshell that used to be part
of the greater nausea, swimming around like
bewitched smurf spores
The blue barbeque's lair, enzymes like a fashion
to the tiny doomed aureola of charcoal
In spasmodic cellophane stacking packets of selective amnesia
that shoot lasers into the void
while crinkling like a nosebleed
On my perm's pulp adventure – an encounter with a
juggernaut which happened to be the salacious byproduct of
a rabbit. Dangling out of the poltergeist:
a cell-like endoscopic image of a hairspray canister
Afforded a bit of free time to scratch, so good, so goooooo-
an invaluable opportunity for the Ghostbusters
to stare into my gills. They'll see the crepe paper of
a tongue amid a terrible seizure, in sleep agonizing over
the exact location of the entry wound

--Tyson Bley walks dogs, bakes cake, and works as a nuclear physicist for a living. He writes mainly about these experiences. Find him at http://soapstain.blogspot.com/.

From The Book of Corporate Prayer

2011-06-24T20:31:00.002-04:00

 
Help me to love the Corporation
that gives me employment,
to go beyond
what is an acceptable level of productivity
in corporate society,
                               and
to always do more than is expected
to further the cause of profitability
 
 
 
 
Almighty Corporation,
ruler of all the peoples of the earth,
forgive,
           we pray,
                        our shortcomings as workers;
purify our hearts to see and love the bottom line;
give wisdom to our executives
and steadfastness to our employees;
                                                       and
bring us at last to what you consider a fair wage,
whose foundations are your mercy,
your justice,
                   your goodwill,
                                         and,
                                                 above all,
your continued profitability
Amen
 
 
 
 
Use me then,
my Corporation,
for whatever purpose,
                                and in whatever way,
you may require
Here is my poor person,
an empty vessel;
                          fill it
with the grace of employment by you
Here is my idle soul;
quicken it and refresh it
for your profitability
Take my mouth to spread abroad
the glory of your name;
                                   so that
at all times I may be able to say from the heart
My Corporation needs me,
                                        and
more than that,
                        I need Him
 
 
 
 
Corporation,
you give the great commission:
Heal the bottom line and preach profits
Help us witness to your purpose
Corporation,
you call us to your service,
that the world may trust your promises
for as long as you're willing to keep them;
give us all new fervor
You may hoard as private treasure
all we so freely give
And Corporation,
you bless us with words assuring us
we will be with You as long as we serve Your ends
Amen
 
 
 
O Corporation,
when you give to us work,
grant us to know it is just a beginning,
                                                        and
will continue on down to the end,
until it be thoroughly finished,
when it yields the true glory,
Profits
 
 
 
 
And,
        lastly,
                  let us ray
for the continued complacent complicity
of the nine old men
(some of whom at any given time
will be women),
that they may keep considering us persons
now and forever
Amen

--Michael Ceraolo is a 53-year old civil servant/poet who has had one full-length book (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press) published, plus a few shorter-length books and numerous magazine publications. The poem The Book of Corporate Prayer is part of a growing collection entitled "The Business of America."

Hungry People

2011-06-23T21:33:00.002-04:00


Fry the bird and stuff its ass
full of fat and potato,
stuff its head with lard and butter
and sip its blood like a tall glass
                           of milk.

Uncle Eddie, take another drink,
I'll go shot for shot with you - you pour
I'll swallow.
I see that mask over your eyes, that
thin glaze of crumbling life, of arteries
clogged and love missing the ladder
rungs,
                           much like this.
                       
feel the claustrophobic china
plates - the musk of PaPa's old sweater,
but he's dead now so
I guess we won't be smelling
that stink
                           again. Put another

notch in the warped wicker
door frame; "another year
we all stayed afloat, another year
we can be together." Oh, hold my hand
PaPa, hold my whale-blimp hand
and I'll hold yours, bony and dead,
                           but not at this table.

Not now, not amongst rejecting
hearts and failing livers, not amongst
fake smiles,
stories about how Brittany is doing
in school; you don't give a fuck,
you're dying! Oh sweet end,
the table dripping with gravy the color
of milky come, turniped squash mashed with
cinnamon, arugula and basil and tomatoes
and the
                           dying.

the sweet end, the last supper
with us, PaPa, and you can't even remember
our names. You can't remember
Uncle Eddie
and how the rum ruined
his children, you can't remember
his insides as coarse as sandpaper,
you can't remember Brittany dropping
out of the nursing program, picking up
with what-the-fuck's-his-name; you can't
remember me standing next to you,
by your burnished coffin, kneeling like the rest,
pretending to moan out a prayer, when
I really didn't say anything
                           at all.

--Bryan S. Way just graduated from Bridgewater State University. In the following years, he will be living on the road and in the mountains, developing community with the precision of a vagabond, and exploring the depths of character that can only be attained through the willing rejection of comfortable living. And he will write about it.

Death Was a Poem about Vultures in the Sun

2011-06-22T21:31:00.002-04:00


I miss the blackened bones piled on the sidewalk,
          stacked in peculiar patterns,
          forming shapes that bent in the eve,
                                      as dead bodies are rotting poetry.
          They had a way of pinging themselves
          from velcroed black walls,
          sticky as labrador retrievers
                                      hopping from honey puddle
                                      to honey puddle,
          as bees would chase the beasts & succumb
          to their skin like flies on shit.
I miss when we'd bury ourselves, likewise,
          like the grubs of the earth;
          like worms in the dirt.
                                       Once, many years ago,
          I found the body of a deer decomposing
          on the side of the road,
          and pondered existence.
                                       I pondered purpose in breathing,
          the existential 'why is why.'
          the organic matter sculpted of piss and liver,
          melting on track with
                   the rest of the plunge - where can I find you tonight?
I pondered the animal's energy with the old woods,
          the ancient mantled oak flowering sweet life
          in freed spaces, and then now,
          years later, the bones are still there.
                                        Left to dry. Mummied in
          the brisk of the delegated sun;
          an orphan, naked, under a streetlight
          at the corner of roads seldom traveled.
                                        Shards of clay stripped from the remains,
          tiny piece by tiny piece,
          and still I wonder - where do you sleep tonight?
                      where do you rest your head? how many deer
                                        lay dead by roadsides? how many do I not care about?

mi magnifico

2011-06-21T21:28:00.003-04:00

oblong drops of coffee drip down the spine
of plastic cups. somewhere in between I hear the voices,
my parents; they call my name but their cries are distanced
in paper-walled echoes.
mother on her knees weeping softly,
it's alright to let it out she says. your dad is strong,
she says, we'll get through this no matter what. outside winter
is being pissed on by the angry sun,
the fucking pissed off angry fucking sun.
it melts the muddy snow, the mass grows inside my father.
I'm here for you dad, forever, I say.
I know you are.
when night comes all is quiet, bellies spilling with
arrowy pigfeast, I turn and hold and believe in no magic
& no god. somewhere in the sky
there is no one laughing no one proving me wrong.
it is all fluttered prose. without conviction
the fumes run through the room, scaled in particled air,
filling up the sleeves of sadness like the leaky veins of a wristcutter.
father is sleeping now, I can hear his breathing apparatus -
robot pumping oxygen into his lungs. mother with a book upon her,
the dogs passed out in the neolithic night.
we bang on turtle shells
we bathe in heated coals and rocks
we try to stay awake through the sterile and the dying.

The Old Rocking Chair and the Old Man Sitting in It

2011-06-20T21:26:00.002-04:00

Incoherent and void of teeth,
Old Man chewing his gums and spitting tobacco.
A dog sleeping on the porch with his paws
hanging over the edge, strumming the scraps of wood
like paper streamers parading down
on a high school gymnasium. In the fields,
children throwing husks of corn at critters dodging past -
rabbits, mostly, but once in a great while, to their delight,
a ground weasel.

Old Man staring out into the rows of thatched vegetable,
watching the children swell through their years.
They turn into adults, then into old men, then into corpses.
Then they are born again and again.

--Bryan S. Way just graduated from Bridgewater State University. In the following years, he will be living on the road and in the mountains, developing community with the precision of a vagabond, and exploring the depths of character that can only be attained through the willing rejection of comfortable living. And he will write about it.

Dat. (dot) N and Eros

2011-06-19T21:52:00.002-04:00

The floor plan is scribbled with tiny annotations in a non-architectural hand, hypertrophied hallways and with rooms half the width between. After a while the floor plans stood up by themselves and, without inviting suitors, were leased and sold as private spaces (under contract) in which good men might perform their hideous acts for the benefit of cedar and birch statuettes which lined the walls, also unbidden and as confused at their present situation as the now-erect floor plans were at theirs.*

(*This isn't to say that the floor plans or the blue and yellow divisions weren't pleased, just that they couldn't say either way yet.)

--Nick Willows is 20, resides in Melbourne, Australia, and isn't really anybody yet. He writes daily at IncreaseLucidity.blogspot.com.

I am a writer

2011-06-18T21:16:00.002-04:00

I am a writer
Words are my weapons
If you don’t watch out
I’ll participle your hair with an axiom

--Robert Laughlin lives in Chico, California. Two of his short stories are Million Writers Award Notable Stories, and his novel, Vow of Silence, was favorably reviewed by Publishers Weekly. His website is at www.pw.org/content/robert_laughlin.

Borrowed time

2011-06-17T21:03:00.003-04:00

These woods, dark in midday armor,
are barely breathing.
I walk, numb, over grass and vines
that do not move,
as if I merely hover here
on borrowed time.

I cannot see or feel my feet
or hear steps in the undergrowth.
Only smell is free to vibrate here:
pine needles, moldy, unturned earth.
Rot and sweetness fill my breath
with ancient drumming.

I must tell you; this is not your journey.

But these are my words;
I am carving them now, on strips of bark
that bleed into my opened hands.
The hard-bitten syllables open arteries
of copper; they snake along my wrists
to soak into death-ready ground.

This forest is not safe at night.

I think it is thwarted. The river is thick,
sluggish with blood and offal.
My hand, plunged below the surface,
unlocks lament that keens beyond its sound
as I search, without a point of reference,
the long-dead maps now visible above.

I don't know why I hurl the bark
into the distance. I throw it as far as I can,
and with it, I sling blood from my hand
in a fan-shaped arc. It hovers,
weightless in dense air,
hanging, a bloody rune
that muddled, dying bees
mistake for lavender.

You are not safe here.

I know I am not.
I have come too far and these woods
are dangerous; there are no constants.
I have lost my way, lost the words.
I have forgotten something I knew as a child.

You cannot trust yourself, not your senses,
not in this forest of rot and sweetness.

I cannot, though I am tired and cold.
I want to sleep, but I cannot
rest in these dream-filled woods,
in a forest that slips from consciousness
into icy voids that slice into night.

Once I carved words into memory.
I try to summon them now but they are lost.
I threw them into coppery graves
filled with dead things, with dead bees,
and I watered them with poison rivers.

They were irreplaceable,
and I let them go.

--Susan S. Keiser is a writer and editor, living in Key West, Florida and dabbling in pastry and literary marketing. Her work has been
published in SpokenWar, Haggard and Halloo, Carcinogenic Poetry, The Camel Saloon, and Orion headless.

Untitled

2011-06-17T09:14:00.003-04:00

It's ladies night, all the girls drink for free
So they're hugging, and crying
A friend asks a question: Will I get what I deserve?
And falls asleep. I carry her home.

Take off her shoes
Lay her in bed
Wonder should I leave her dress
Check she's still breathing
A hand under her nose
Despite the rise and fall of her chest

--Nick Willows is 20, resides in Melbourne, Australia, and isn't really anybody yet. He writes daily at IncreaseLucidity.blogspot.com.

Calliope Nerve Interview Series: Kyle Muntz

2011-06-13T21:18:00.006-04:00

Kyle, how did you become an author at such a young age? How long have you been writing?

I started writing when I was really young—I’m not quite sure of the exact number anymore, but I’m pretty sure it was somewhere around 14 or 15. The first three novels I wrote were really terrible, and then after that something just sort of clicked, and suddenly, after a little while, I was able to reread my work without cringing. I’m really glad I was able to reach the point, or I never would have been able to begin submitting anywhere.

Tell us about your book "Voices." Why did you write it?

I went into Voices intending to write something completely unpublishable—to a pursue a certain experimental strain that had been appearing in my writing up until that time as far I could. A lot of things that I was feeling and thinking around that point ended up becoming really apparent, personally and emotionally—and then, on the intellectual side, the novel was built around concepts drawn from semiotics, existentialism, and poststructualism, then put together sort of like science fiction. Even though on it’s very much a “formless” book and one reliant on concepts drawn from philosophy, I was hoping to create something with narrative drive and real emotional intensity, as opposed to the “cold formalism” associated with experimental fiction. I couldn’t believe it initially when Crossing Chaos excepted the manuscript, but I’m really glad they decided to take the chance.

And you have a new book out, "Sunshine in the Valley." Tell us about it. Why is it important?

Sunshine in the Valley was one of the books I’ve I always wanted to write, though I’m not sure if I knew it at the time. On the surface it looks less experimental than Voices, but I think it’s more conceptually sophisticated and polished stylistically, and also has extremely prominent elements of “plot” in the most complex sense. I’ve always thought the move away from narrative is sort of a mistake. People have been taking the novel apart for over 70 years, but I think we’re at the point now where we can begin putting it back together, or hopefully give it a try, at least.

The novel itself is about a village surrounded by living walls situated somewhere in what might be the impossibly distant future. The approach I ended up taking was something like fantasy with heavy elements of mythology, and then building from that to take the novel in as many directions as possible. It’s not at all a “genre” piece, though it uses a lot of elements traditionally associated with genre fiction. I had hoped the experience would be really surreal and elaborate, and also engaging like a traditional novel, but in a very different way. I’m really interested to see how people will respond to it since for the most part it’s very different from Voices (and also from everything I’ve done since).

Do you consider yourself prolific?

To a certain degree, though there are a lot of people who write much faster than I do. I generally complete one or two novels a year, though most of the really early ones I’m not interested in publishing. The compulsion to write is always there, but I’ll generally take a few months or so off between each novel, with the goal of being someone completely different before I try something else.

You've been labeled as avante-garde. Is that a fitting expression for your body of work?

To an extent. I have two novels—Voices, and another unpublished one called Green Lights/Purity of Vision—that fit more firmly in the territory of the avant-garde. Other than that, I like to think of myself as incorporating elements of the avant-garde into a kind of hybrid form. Since the subject matter changes a lot from book to book, recently I’ve felt compelled to move more towards something a little different, since I noticed I was sort of writing myself into a corner, but there’s always an influence from the avant-garde in all my writing, because that’s usually the type of material I enjoy reading the most.

Who/what influences you?

I have a list of absolute favorites authors whose influence, I think, is apparent in lots of my writing—Samuel Delany, Haruki Murakami, Borges, Gene Wolfe, Thomas Pynchon—and then in general, I’m usually heavily influenced by anything I read or watch. My writing is generally very separate from who I am as a person, particularly the narrators themselves, so I draw less from my day to day experience than certain permutations of images/ideas/themes that I encounter in other people’s work.

What's on your recommended reading list?

“Sayonara Gansters,” by Genichiro Takahashi, is possibly the best thing I’ve read in the last few years. A few more exceptional titles would be “Apostrophe/Parenthesis,” by Frederick Mark Kramer and “The Zoo Where We Are Fed to God”, by Michael Ventura. I’m also really looking forward to “The Day We Delay,” by Michael J. Seidlinger, and “The Infinite Library,” by Kane X. Faucher, though in the interest of honesty, both of these guys are friends and label-mates of mine, so I’m fairly biased….

Believe in writer's block?

Definitely. I seem to get it all the time, usually when I’m somewhere around 2/3rds of the way through a piece. It sucks, but it generally goes away. The thing I’m most of afraid of, I think, would be a time when it doesn’t….

Define success.

“Success”—a shapeless, insubstantial thing that exists only in the imagination.

Listen to music while you create? Who?

I used to listen to music all the time, but a little less now. Some mainstays are Radiohead, Sigur Ros, Maudlin of the Well, and then ambient music in general. Not so much anymore, though. The “silence” of writing is something I’ve really begun to get in touch with, recently.

Do you have a "creative ritual" before or while you write?

Coffee, or something else with lots of caffeine in it. I usually try my best to look for the impulse behind writing in myself. Most of the time I find it. Those are the good days.

What does the future hold for Kyle Muntz?

I’ve got another novel coming out next year, VII (or) The Life, Times and Tragedy of Sir Edward William Locke the Third: Gentleman, which is actually a historical novel (of sorts), and very, very different from anything I’ve released so far. When I originally came up with the concept, I envisioned the coming together—in a very abstract sense—of the elements I enjoyed from Artaud, Nabokov, Borges, and maybe John Barth. It’s sort of a mix of classical surrealism and the theatrical avant-garde with metafictional overtones and even a hint of fantasy. It’s also very much an “evil” novel, as distinguished from everything else I’ve done, much darker and with heavier polemical overtones.

Tree of Pearl

2011-06-12T21:05:00.002-04:00

There across the clearing
Of rising grass and weeds,
Parallel to our dinner train—
The rushing highway.

Beyond stands an army,
Soldiers dressed in green,
Lined to form a wall,
The battalion ready for war.

Out in front and to the center
A ghost is standing.
Such contrast against the emerald line,
Pearl-white and gleaming bark,

Leafless branching;
It looks as bone.
The trunk splits,
A twin is formed;

Conjoined, they share the roots,
And drink as one.

--Wesley Dylan Gray is a writer with a flair for the dark, the twisted, the beautiful, and the strange. He resides in Tarpon Springs, Florida with his wife Brenda and daughter Elizabeth “Ellie” Jadzia. His poetry and prose has appeared in various small press magazines and anthologies. Find him online at www.wesleydylangray.com.

Dark River

2011-06-11T21:02:00.001-04:00

The dark river churns;
It sings to lonely hills,
And sweeps the babbling brooks.

The dark river burns;
It bends the mind
With turns, forks, and hooks.

The dark river flows;
It beckons to shadow,
And holds mountains in its palm.

The dark river runs;
It speaks to wild places,
Of faded lights, and whispers, and song.

--Wesley Dylan Gray is a writer with a flair for the dark, the twisted, the beautiful, and the strange. He resides in Tarpon Springs, Florida with his wife Brenda and daughter Elizabeth “Ellie” Jadzia. His poetry and prose has appeared in various small press magazines and anthologies. Find him online at www.wesleydylangray.com.

Preposterous

2011-06-10T20:58:00.002-04:00

search
mornings internet
explorer

can hear
download music

do my duty
- upload

device
a relationship-

bunking
thoughts on chat

love tactfully
on skype

earn fameflakes
status updates

learn
a little
about
the Beatles

a lot
about sexual positions.

Google refreshes
me to me

wakefullness
multiplies
time into speed.

login

to father figures,

logout

of bedrooms.

distract
to books
to words
to parents
to fingers
to eyes

--Shivani Mutneja straddles between Delhi and Ghaziabad in a normal week. She teaches English Literature at Delhi University. She holds a degree in Cinema Studies from School of Arts & Aesthetics in JNU and is thinking about pursuing a PhD.

Coffee House Layouts

2011-06-09T20:52:00.002-04:00

Chai is a thick brand of
bourgeoisie snot.
Track lighting
throws itself around sticky.
Heroin addicts with running mascara
take a booth by the uni-sex bathroom.

They are caricatures.
Smokers cling outside
every entrance.
Standing close in the cold,
sometimes laughing,
babes enjoy Cloves and cappuccino.

--Charles Clifford Brooks III has been published in The Dead Mule, Eclectica, Gloom Cupboard, The Smoking Poet, Red Fez, vox poetica, Asylum, Otoliths, Contemporary American Voices, Prick of the Spindle and Journal of Liberal Arts and Education. His poetry has been featured on the Joe Milford Poetry Show, Not Your Mother’s Poetry and vox poetica’s 15 Minutes of Poetry. Charles Clifford’s first book of poetry, Whirling Metaphysics, will be published by Leaf Garden Press. He lives in Athens, Georgia.

Magellan

2011-06-08T20:52:00.000-04:00

You wish I'd look at maps with you,
that I'd watch the way you navigate,
avoiding polar icecaps and subtle obstacles.
But if I did, I doubt I'd ever really find
the shortest distance between two points,
since a straight line is unlikely to inspire me
when the wind is on the water, on a
pure blue sea of anonymity.

Still, I like the tan edges of islands, with
curving lines of latitude and longitude,
and currents clearly marked for seafarers,
or for iniquitous dives into the forbidden.
The ocean is a shade of blue perfection, and
the feel of folded paper in my hand is salt
and something like tears.

Would you mind if I just tore this loveliness
into random shapes that might mean something,
if only to me?

--Susan S. Keiser’s checkered past includes a stint as a high school English teacher, a docent gig in a museum dedicated solely to the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ongoing commitment to a highly specialized literary marketing outfit and a brief fling as a pastry chef. She also spent years as a bank executive. Her poems have appeared in Carcinogenic Poetry, Orion headless, Haggard and Halloo, Right Hand Pointing and SpokenWar and she is at work on a book in which both kudzu and ice fishing figure prominently.

Stronger Than Dirt

2011-06-07T22:20:00.001-04:00

When I'm bad
hurt, forget all
mercenaries...
physicians?

hell, listen:

take me to the sax
player's bungalow, bell tower
on the corner of Marine Drive
around midnight, color of rose
quartz, six stories below
the power station.
When nothing else
helps, before extreme
unction, so's to hear
sax man blow

the screaming
coda solo from Touch Me
by the Doors. Been said this
reed man, he done it before,
really heals

frozen arteries from a house
on Marine Drive, in the style
of summer wind on sea cove,
on a long stem, he blows
those glissando
arpeggios.

When I'm maximum
hurt please drop me
at sax man's wash, toss
these breaths in the bell
of his horn, bathtub coda
for the clean
unborn.

--Dennis Mahagin's poems and stories appear in Juked, 42opus,Exquisite Corpse, Stirring, Absinthe Literary Review, Northville Review, elimae, Night Train, Storyglossia, and Smokelong Quarterly. He's also a staff editor at FRiGG magazine.

Calliope Nerve Interview Series: Kenneth Weene

2011-06-06T00:03:00.009-04:00

Ken, tell us about your books Widow's Walk and Memoirs From The Asylum? Why are they important?

There are lots of books which are great to read but are not important. They hold our interest and keep us laughing or guessing. However, they do not get us to really think. To me books should be both good reads and important; they should get the little gray cells working.

I try to write books that are both good reads and important.

In “Widow’s Walk” I ask the reader to think about religion and spirituality, about the conflict between personal desire and responsibility, and even about what God wants from us. It is an important book. Is it also a good read? The folks who have reviewed it certainly seem to think so. It is a good story peopled with interesting and realistic characters with whom the reader can empathize.

The characters in “Memoirs From the Asylum” are even more compelling. They – staff and inmates alike – are caught in the world of the asylum. Yes, it is a psychiatric hospital, but it is also a metaphor for the ways in which people hide from reality. This is a novel that finds its roots in existentialism and in the terror we all feel as we consider real freedom.

“Memoirs From the Asylum” is written in a tragi-comedic voice. I believe that we cannot face such a momentous issue if we cannot recognize the inherent humor that is part of the human dilemma.

For those who look for unifying themes within a writer’s work, I should add that the tragi-comedic perspective continues a very important idea in “Widow’s Walk.” If we are to cope with the underlying angst that is being human, we must hold a notion of life’s purpose. If, as the characters in “Widow’s Walk do, we look to God for that notion, then we must ask ourselves about God’s sense of humor.

Of course, when people read both books, I hope they will share their thoughts that are elicited with me.

How do your create buzz for a book? (How do you promote your work?)

For one thing, I do interviews like this one. I also do any radio shows I can. I am very active on social media, and I offer to write guest blogs. One thing that is very important in my efforts is getting stories and poems published since such publication means people read my work and may want to find more.

One thing that sets me apart is that I don’t have a blog of my own. Why not? Because the people who read a writer’s blog already know that writer. The goal has to be to get new exposure.

My publisher, All Things That Matter Press, is very encouraging of a mutual effort among its writers. Although we are from all over the world, we are friends through an Internet group. We support one another in many ways. For example, I will mention many of the books whenever the opportunity comes up. Incidentally, I have met three of the other ATTMP authors in real life, and they have been every bit as delightful as I could have wished.

Why do you write?

You might ask why I breathe. It is just a part of who I am. I get up in the morning and spend some time at the computer. (My handwriting is so bad that using a pencil is generally counterproductive.) I don’t set a time limit or writing goal for the day; I just let myself go and try to enjoy the process. Some days I work at editing and correcting. Some days I can get huge chunks of writing done. Perhaps the best days are the ones on which I write just some small bit but a bit that really makes me happy.

How did you become an author?

As a kid I loved to read. By fourth or fifth grade I had ideas of becoming a writer. Being a “good” child, I didn’t grow up to be a writer. It wasn’t until the end of my professional career that I decided it was time to go do what I had always wanted.

I started writing some poetry and a few short stories. I even had some essays published in local papers, did readings, put together some chapbooks. However, I couldn’t get to the next level. I realized there was a problem in my psyche. My father had never been very supportive, and my internalized father-imago was standing in the way. I knew that I had to deal with that block before the old man died.

Having retired and moved from the East to Arizona, I decided I had to force the issue with myself. With my wife’s support, I put together an anthology of my stuff and published it with one of those pay-your-own-way houses. I called it “Songs For My Father.” When I gave him his copy, I felt a great sense of freedom. Once “Songs” was actually on Amazon and people were reading it, I knew that I had reached my goal. Since then not only “Widow’s Walk” and “Memoirs From the Asylum,” but also many short stories and poems have found their way into the literary world. Wow! I’m a writer.

What other careers have you had besides writing? How does your background affect your work?

I have to own up; I’m trained as a shrink. I practiced as a psychologist for years. I have also taught at the college level (and one year in middle school).

I should mention that I’m also an ordained minister in a small Protestant denomination, The Congregational Church of Practical Theology. Our denomination is primarily concerned with providing pastoral counselors.

What inspires you to write?

There are always two inspirations that come together when I actually produce something. The first is a story idea (or for poetry a metaphor idea). The second is the larger questions that I want to address. For example, the relationship between fear and freedom that I explore in “Memoirs From the Asylum.”

Believe in writer's block?

In my experience there are two kinds of writer’s block in my mind. The first is the kind of neurotic issue that I had to confront by putting together “Songs For My Father.” Often I will run into moments of self-doubt; the psyche is not an easy opponent.

The second kind of writer’s block has to do with working oneself into a corner and not seeing a way to resolve something. I have a book started and on which I have been blocked. The title is “Remembrance of Things Present.” It involves a science fiction book within the larger novel. The principle character of the novel is a writer looking back on his life, and that science fiction book was his great success. The problem was that I needed to have a clearer idea of how that science fiction book mirrored the issues in the larger work. Recently, I had an epiphany; I see how the book will work.

Fortunately, I have a three-week stay at the Writers’ Colony in Arkansas coming up this fall. I plan to use that time to get a lot of “Remembrance” done.

What tips do you have for budding authors?

Write, write, and write.

Find a group of writers where you can share. Don’t be afraid of criticism, but rather relish it. The best of those groups are honest. It is also best if you read your work out loud in the meetings.

Be sure to have an editor, somebody to check your work once you think it’s finished and before you try to publish it. I have had occasion to judge books for prizes and to review them for various settings. It always amazes me that so many of them have not been edited. By the way a good editor goes beyond grammar and such; your editor should make sure that your voice is consistent, that your logic works, and that you don’t somehow lose the reader’s attention.

What's on your recommended reading list?

I can only suggest a few books that I have recently read that have kept me thinking about what I want to achieve as a writer and what I think good writing is about.

Tim O’Brien; The Things They Carried

Paul Harding; Tinkers

Jose Saramago; Blindness (even in translation a great work)

Of course I love many of the classics. Conrad, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Faulkner, Steinbeck. You get the idea. I also like to read and attend plays. I love good dialog and try to write it. Becket, Pirandello, Lorca, Miller, and Brecht are among my favorites. I also read poetry regularly. If I had to pick a few poets, I’d go with Thomas, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, and Milton.

In case your wondering I don’t recommend too much Shakespeare or the Victorian novelists because they tend to bring out the verbose in us. That doesn’t mean I don’t think they write beautifully.

Last, of course an aspiring writer should read Weene.

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 affects readers and publishers? Will e-books replace the real thing?

Most of this is stuff I avoid thinking about. However, I do have an opinion about e-books. I prefer print. More importantly, I love bookstores. It is so terribly difficult to browse in a world without actual physical books. Also, I think from the selling point the quality of covers can help tremendously. All Things That Matter Press has done dynamite covers for me. When people see them, they pick the books up and look inside.

One nice thing from an author’s point of view about e-books is that they can’t be resold or gifted – at least it can be set up that way. This means that we are likely to get more royalties. Of course the actual size of royalties is usually minuscule.

Why is the small press important?

I don’t think too much of self-publishing. Why not? Because the products are often poor quality – especially poor editing. That is why many review sites and contests won’t accept self-published work. A good small press will make sure there is a decent product. The publisher should have skin in the game. For example by providing editing and cover design. If they expect you to pay for those services, you are simply self-publishing and doing it in a way that will even more severely limit your royalties.

One problem with small presses is that they seldom can place your books in stores and cannot offer marketing campaigns.

What's next for Ken Weene?

I’ve already mentioned “Remembrance of Things Present.” There are two other novels that are close to publication.

“Tales Form The Dew Drop Inne: Because there’s one in every town” is set in a bar in Albuquerque, I town in which I have spent three nights. It is about people at the bottom of the social ladder, not bums and homeless so much as those who are hanging on for dear life and trying to find social connectedness and a sense of family. This one is ready to go.

“Time To Try the Soul of Man” is a combined conspiracy and coming-of-age novel set in New York City during 2000 – 2001. Yes, it is in part about 9/11, but it about much more. It is In part my paean to newspapers, and it is also about lust, greed, and the seamy side of life. I am currently working on the rewrite; after that comes the editor. (I hire one before I send my work to the publisher; then they get to do their editing. Makes for a better product.)

Meanwhile, the short stories and poetry continue to flow. I just can’t resist the urge to keep writing and publishing.

Deus Ex Machina

2011-06-04T23:11:00.000-04:00

They walk side-by-side alongside the river. They look out across the horizon of diamond ripples then up at the sun that blinds their retinas and makes them sneeze behind reeling lids of violet polka dots.

“Oh god, bless you.” He says.

“Thank you,” she chuckles. “God bless you.”

They meet then reflect in each other’s eyes as Seraphim anew as a flock of unseen Robins “tweet” melodiously; their hands morph into silver-tipped red horseshoes; their heads balloon and float into the sky.

“We just start all over.” They agree, continuing along. “Not look back.”

But the eggs in their stomachs from breakfast suddenly hatch into molting caterpillars that become a flutter of nervous butterflies; beads of salty liquid come to a rolling boil in their hands and demagnetize them. Their heads pop into ragged pieces of rubber.

“But--” She says.

“Yeah I know.” He says quickly.

A breeze snatches a red leaf from a passed tree and whirls up her strands like the snakes of Medusa and reverberates through his vocal cords as he picks the leaf from her hair.

“But I love you.” He says, presenting it like a flower.

She smiles and then pauses, small waves of unrelenting remembrances washing across her face and forming a reptilian skin over the dark gray water. The sun hurls itself toward the horizon like a Molotov cocktail and ignites the earth.

“No, you love that stupid--!” She blurts and neutralizes into a pillar of salt.

Turning round, he looks into the scorched tree at the burning angel hissing and tweeting with laughter.

--Kindra J. Ferriabough is a dilettante and; therefore, frequently confused. Some of her stuff can be seen at DOGZPLOT, Ken*Again, Unlikely Stories and Clockwise Cat.

End Time

2011-06-03T22:52:00.004-04:00

At the end times
a tightrope dancer performs
above the crowd in Ararat.
Lightly leaping feet
and hurrahs of children
while old men sip
pomegranate wine
and nibble
garlicky misov boereg.

On the mountain
a woman gathers sticks
as her grandmother once
gathered for the clay oven
where prayers and bread
celebrate God.

--Kenneth Weene has appeared in numerous publications – most recently featured in Sol and publication in Spirits, and Vox Poetica. An anthology of his writings, Songs for my Father, was published by Inkwell Productions in 2002. His short stories have appeared in many places, including Legendary, Sex and Murder Magazine, The New Flesh Magazine, The Santa Fe Literary Review, Daily Flashes of Erotica Quarterly, Bewildering Stories, Red Fez, and Stymie.

AT THE BLUE PUSSY

2011-06-02T21:42:00.000-04:00

Wan faces of the pale waitresses
Palace of solace
Seekers of some kind of
Enlightenment
A small diversion
Here we sit
Blue Pussy Café
The good gray poet
Stroking his whiskers
Watching the tenderloin
Undulate between his fingers
Musing
Larry the Clown
Playing with the maitre d’ again
Ripping off his face
Replacing it
With a red bohemian mask
So slim a margin
Between death and life
The champagne cocktails
Hold us at their mercy
For ransom

--Steven Gulvezan is a disciple, in words, of the great sculptor, Alberto Giacometti. At their best he hopes that his stories and poems are able to cut close enough to the bone of truth to make them worthwhile to read. He’s recently been published in Underground Voices, Gutter Eloquence, and The Battered Suitcase. Links to some of his writings may be found at: http://www.mysterywriters.org/user/607.

Day of Articulated Presence

2011-06-02T21:37:00.000-04:00

Pool of sustained dust
she climbed and began post-theory swam
            purple
veined and plummet persuasion, hidden.  At noon
this
                        was
advantageous
oracle of human desperation
pardon                         peculiar          realm of thoughtful
predilection former wears of wearing bone
shave and topical extrapolation.  Instinctual passive
persuasion renouncing alone
                                                then the I heals
circumstance relit amid superstitious faculties of a neoteric device.

ON THE OCCASION OF SEEING THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST BURST FORTH FROM A PRINT OF EDWARD HOPPER’S NIGHTHAWKS UPON MY BEDROOM WALL

2011-06-01T21:39:00.002-04:00

“Jerusalem!” I cried
Threw myself upon the floor
With a big black coffee
And a corned beef to go

--Steven Gulvezan is a disciple, in words, of the great sculptor, Alberto Giacometti. At their best he hopes that his stories and poems are able to cut close enough to the bone of truth to make them worthwhile to read. He’s recently been published in Underground Voices, Gutter Eloquence, and The Battered Suitcase. Links to some of his writings may be found at: http://www.mysterywriters.org/user/607.

Frost Bitten

2011-05-31T21:15:00.001-04:00

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

2011-05-30T21:05:00.002-04:00

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

2011-05-29T23:24:00.001-04:00


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

2011-05-29T23:22:00.001-04:00

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

2011-05-28T23:59:00.003-04:00

--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

2011-05-28T23:23:00.001-04:00

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

2011-05-28T23:20:00.003-04:00

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

2011-05-27T23:59:00.000-04:00

Detroit's Forever Mayor

2011-05-27T23:15:00.008-04:00

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

2011-05-26T23:59:00.001-04:00

Loose Cage

2011-05-26T23:13:00.003-04:00

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

2011-05-25T23:11:00.001-04:00

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

2011-05-25T21:48:00.002-04:00

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

2011-05-19T00:00:00.001-04:00

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

2011-05-18T23:58:00.001-04:00

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

2011-05-17T23:56:00.001-04:00

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

2011-05-16T23:54:00.003-04:00

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

2011-05-15T23:47:00.002-04:00


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

2011-05-13T22:04:00.002-04:00

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

2011-05-12T22:03:00.002-04:00

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

2011-05-11T22:00:00.003-04:00

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

2011-05-10T21:55:00.001-04:00

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}

2011-05-09T22:17:00.006-04:00

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

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}

2011-05-08T22:14:00.009-04:00

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?

Incoherent Ranting #28

2011-05-07T22:09:00.005-04:00

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.

Untitled

2011-05-06T22:05:00.002-04:00

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.

Untitled

2011-05-05T22:01:00.011-04:00

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

2011-05-04T21:57:00.002-04:00

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

Untitled

2011-05-03T21:55:00.007-04:00

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

Every Day of Her Life

2011-05-02T21:51:00.003-04:00

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