SEARCH ENGINE

by Jeffrey Park

Tracing random
threads
they force
their way
into my private sphere
through pipes
twisting constipated tubes
asking demanding
answers –
search me
(all blithe innocence
behind a veil
of dead links
and data retrieval errors) –
shrug
blank stare
if you’re not redirected
in five seconds
try pressing
here.

EMAIL

by Marc Carver

I got an email
trying to hack my email again.
I sent them back a message.

Don't try and hack my email as I have no money
you would better spend your time
trying to hack someone's email
who has money.

I hope, really hope they do manage to con someone
out of some money.
It has got to be better than getting a job right

OUTSIDE, IT'S COLD.

by A.V. Koshy

Outside they are getting ready to kill each other in the name of religion
Slip through the nets
Let us walk unseen
To the field where the small, wild, white flowers bloom
There on the grass
Let me make love to you
Your hair in my mouth
You tangled in my arms
While far away sounds of weapons and thunder
Tell us time is short
Soon I will have to go
And try to bring peace
And they may kill me for it, my love
Let me have my fill of you
Be strength to my marrow
And believe I wiill come back
If only to drink the honey of your lips
As the crow, thirsty
Does
From rain-puddle or water tap
While you, to me, incline
You lips, eyes, cheek and pretty bust
To make sad love worthwhile
With our scanty kisses
Only a bottle
In such hard pressed times
Of holy water
No longer oceans wide

The Goddess in spite of herself

by Tannen Dell

She was crafted with eyes
like sapphire galaxies
plucked from the shim'ring
pedestals of the seven,
polished by the electric
gravity of her smile.

Her quintessence
is not beautiful
No
It is the point of origin
Of a thousand fuchsia
snowflakes
Ground together
By the ever locking,
wound up pellucid
atmospheres her cortex
Constructed as a sort of mask,
a net to keep out the many
and allow a concentrated
Few
vivified Eagle Novas
within her multiplicative solitude

And here I hover
A humming phoenix
My second to last evolution
I'll whisper my forked tongue
Through her attention
Press my haphazard fangs
To the collar of her cloak
And glide the fiery feathers
in my claws
across her shadow.
Sand turns to molten glass

The seven tell me,
they tell me to try
they say to "fight for it."
Ignore the cold
that will encompass
the alpha and omega
of all things as I
make this
 final
sojourn
to the origins
of her sapphire eyes.

At My Age, Mickey Mantle Was Dead

by Wayne Scheer

A 68 year-old
isn't meant to keep up
with a 12 year-old.
I know that
and usually I'm smart enough
not to try.
But yesterday,
after my grandson
listened attentively
to a Shakespeare presentation
and came away with an understanding,
if not an appreciation,
I took him to a park
to work off his excess energy.

We sneaked onto an empty baseball field
used by a local college
and I encouraged him to run the bases,
not having a ball, bat or glove handy.

I timed him, and then he said,
“Your turn, Grandpa.”

I should have known better,
made an excuse,
“Bad heart, you know,”
but the adolescent in me wanted to do it.

So I took off from home,
not like the proverbial bat out of hell
and certainly not like I had a jet pack attached to my ass,
more like an old man jogging across the street,
a challenge to make it to the other side.
The first thing I realized was
although the old legs moved,
one in front of the other,
there was no spring to the step.
By the time I rounded first,
I was huffing;
the puffing came when I reached second.
From then on, it was a battle not to give up
as my grandson counted time.

I rounded third
and thought about a final burst of speed;
I thought about it,
but thought was all I could muster
as I puttered home,
my grandson laughing so hard
he lost count. Thankfully.

At least I didn't fall on my face
and as out of breath as I was,
the old ticker returned to normal soon enough.

“Now let's see how many chin-ups
you can do, Grandpa.”
I managed three,
and got a high five from
a muscular teen
who had just completed his second set
of twenty five.

Across the Field

by James Babbs

across the field and
out past the trees
where the creek bends and
makes its way
through the tall grass
that’s where they found her
dead for several days
her body decomposing
a place where I drive past
every morning
on my way to work and
when they gave her name
that night on the news
I didn’t know who she was
but I kept going to the window and
looking out at the darkness
the lights in the distance
not sure of what it was
I was trying to see

THE WORLD

by Sharon Fedor

But The World was less than a mile from home, and there, in sets, I used to listen to the bands. So the keyboard player must have brought a Clavinet to perform near the ceiling where the stage was located. Could they not have brought that stage closer to earth? The floor? And who owned The World? A Coop? A Conglomerate? The Horns? And where in that crowd of motley disciples, upped and downed, dancing and freaked, went those years?  Why the change? Never a blatant celebration. Never a drunken brawl (no alcohol!)  And now? A blasted eardrum forgetting a note? A cell forgetting to duplicate perfectly? An airline ticket to someplace else? A degree? And where is the keyboard player? And what happened to his Clavinet? Decades pass, but the spirits hang near me. I imagine them as I drive by The World. My eyes see an empty warehouse, space without sound, dust. So I close my eyes, and a black blaring vortex sucks me through to the top, once more, with my buddies, I’m high.

Seeing a Man Who Looked Like the Father I Would Never Recognize

by Amy Soricelli

I saw you the other day on the street sidled against the bad weather grim straight-faced
in your grey suit/ if you had one it would be deep filled pockets of air -
you shrugged by me, of course.
It was not you; the dead wandering around in tip-toe dances of black nightmares -
you are not here in this city -
not here firm down placed hard with cement.
We never shared the same space dimming street corner lights you were
sometimes what the shadows made;
plucked like a feather right out of your hat.
Your eyes were blinking  gold story-book promises: shady eyes under sunglasses;
smile sometimes... they said to you.
smile sometimes.
You knew the small of who we were/ the palm of your hand wrapped tight against some dead love you shared.
We were never there in black and white our birthdays slipped off the tip of your tongue.
The dead could not get out of cabs skipped by to the end of the curb/splash down on piles assembled like
puffy crowds of strangers.
I did not know you then - I would not know you now.

"Missouree" or "Missourah"

by Donal Mahoney

In some parts of Missouri
some folks say "Missourah"
instead of "Missouree."

When politicians mount
the podium at a county fair
to speak to straw-hat farmers

they say Missourah
with the oomph of a tuba
but in St. Louis they say

Missouree nicely
so city folks won't think
they're "hoosiers."

Some city folks call
country folks hoosiers
without malice.

Hoosiers are country folks
who move to the city
and never go home.

In some parts of Missouri
they say "crouch" instead of
"crotch" and "southmore"

instead of "sophomore."
It so happens that
Wilbur Fenster got

kicked in the crouch
playing soccer his
southmore year.

It was then a doctor
discovered he had an
undescended testicle.

Wilbur and Tammy,
his steady till then, thought
all boys only had one.

Free Speech Canto XXXII

by Michael Ceraolo

September 1921
Krobel, Arkansas
The school board's new rule:

                                             "The wearing
of transparent hosiery,
                                 low-necked dresses,
                                                                and
any style of clothing tending to immodesty in dress,
or the use of face powder,
or cosmetics,
                      is prohibited"

                                           Pearl Pugsley
showed what she thought of the board's rule
by putting more powder on her cheeks,
                                                         and
she refused to wash it off when ordered
to do so by one of her teachers
The principal backed the teacher,
                                                 and
the school board sided with the principal,
                                                            and
Pearl Pugsley was expelled
                                           She then sued

The trial judge agreed with her
that the rule was unreasonable,
                                              but
then used lawyerly dance moves
to nevertheless rule against her,
                                                saying
she hadn't actually been kicked out,
she had just not been allowed back in

April 1923
The mavens in the state Supreme Court
decided that the trial judge had been
right in his ruling,
                          but wrong in his reasoning;
                                                                  that
Pearl had in fact been expelled,
                                              and that
the rule she had been expelled for violating
was indeed reasonable:

"It will be remembered also
that respect for constituted authority,
and obedience thereto,
                                  is an essential lesson
to qualify one for the duties of citizenship,
                                                             and
that the schoolroom is an appropriate place
to teach that lesson"

                                 But
it was not a unanimous opinion,
                                               and
the dissenter, Justice Jesse C. Hart,
gets the last word:

" 'Useless laws diminish the authority of necessary ones'
The tone of the majority opinion
exemplifies the wisdom of this old proverb"

Kerala rising

by Reena Prasad

Autocorrect will not allow me to write Kerala
without changing it to One Billion Rising Kerala
Nine days of sunshine, hymn chants, drum beats
 mashed tapioca and ripe jackfruit scented afternoons
 babblers in the backyard, blue streaks on trees
 scampering life among bushes, bare earth between toes,
 time standing still then rushing by on a bike
 toddy dancing on streets, temple fests with Kozhikodan
 Kulkki sarbaths, an evening in a super fast ksrtc bus
 armed with safety pins and roasted peanuts
 watching fat brown cows, yellow chicks and sleepy kittens
 herons in paddy fields, cricket in the alleys,
 early blooms of Kani konna yellow, brown dry leaves
 the taste of cool well water, green mangoes and fresh chips
 the bluest of skies, caws heralding visitors, long forgotten fruits
 warmth of family, familiarity of the air, heightened desires
 a billion of them still rising
 and the plane lands in the desert once more

man of furrowed brow for r.s.

by Mike Foldes               

man of furrowed brow
eyes set in cups so deep
they’re hard to read
even in the best light.

man of furrowed brow,
stone cold, yet living,
high above the rest,
a memory in flight.

scattering clouds,
where are they now,
calumny and silence,
smoke and mirrors.

how it is that a face
carved in stone set
on a pedestal of blocks
can explain the human condition.

North to South

by Tom Hatch

The platform was crowded as Monday's are.
The train pulled in a clamoring for seats
I had to sit facing north the train is going
A melancholy south
Riding backwards all my sins are coming out
From my past colored black and some sepia tones
it is hard to breath as the air
Wants to leave my lazy lungs as I am facing north
Going south but it feels a little cleansing
As my new thoughts for today are hitting me
In the back of the head I should do this more often
As my sins leave my stretching body into some poor
Soul facing south going south in the car following behind
He is sound asleep as commuters do
Waking soon to be angry with my sins laid out
Like a lost game of black, white and red solitaire
In the upstairs hotel room on a bed
As the gunslinger waits for the
duel to begin in front of the saloon
Making for a bad day

A Tribute to Judy Collinsafter seeing Judy Collins Live in Ireland on PBS 3/2/14

by Bobbie Troy

her hands looked old

as she held the mic

with both of them

her legs looked spindly

in the tight pants

and high boots

  

but her voice

is still as sweet

as the River Liffy in Dublin

and she can 

hold a note

as long as the Irish

can hold their Guinness

Loss of Momentum

by Sharon Fedor

Across the highway a station stands
next to the weedy vacant lot. And in that lot,
on two wheels and cinder blocks,
a faceless car sits, paralyzed,
beside the busy road.
Rain bathes bare metal and thirsty weeds.
Mother and daughter,
we sit in the booth of the pizzeria
with slices and fountain cokes.
We are silent.
For a moment our bodies soften
and we see clearly into each other’s eyes,
then, we stiffen again
as you go on saying
you never wanted to learn to drive anyway.      

the weight of bones

by Ayaz Daryl Nielsen

unknown bones
solitary murders, mass
executions, forgotten graves,
homicides, human sacrifices
abandoned, unknown,
the never known -
‘when we are of
body and spirit
they carry us
as we carry them
and when they are gone,
we linger and yearn
an earth-bound yearning
of the forgotten, the hidden,
and somebody, somebody
must tell us good-bye’

HUME GOES FOR A WALK

by Matt Morris

The idea of the shoe
is the memory

of the foot.  This primary
mode of transportation carries

with it–as he steps
off the curb without thinking

about structure or design
of intricate bones, muscles,

tendons, articulated
joints, etc.–

the expectation, certain
as tomorrow’s sun,

of the other shoe, i.e.,
the sandal of induction.

Last Night He Was a King!

by Dave Migman

Restless, twisted sheets knotted
stomach bloated, sick, pressed
by an insufferable weight

lung bunched butterflies
silent clocks
a plateau of new-found agonies
strapped to a laughing monkey
on a carousel of grotesques

always the street
always the sound
always sirens
the revellers that feed them

A thread passes through me
I slide slowly down
naked in this bed
with a bloated gut
all that trapped air
hot air of nights drunken
slow night evaporating
in a dying world

AFTER CATCHING A DOZEN ESCAPEES FROM THE CAMP BEYOND THE HILL

by Michael H. Brownstein

We will never remember
the loose thread near the fence is not a thread.
nor is it hair, a part of a plant,
remnants of a spider’s web.
Look closely.
Skin.
Flayed skin.
Thinly sliced.
Caught in the thorny brush near barbed wire.
We will never remember
Morning—it's still there,
changed,
stretched,
spelling out לקוות, rajaynaynaa, հույս, vam thiab cia siab,  U du gi gv di
(hope)—
and the guards do not notice—
but we do on our way to our details
and it makes us strong.
We will never remember
How to escape,
in twos and threes,
once in a larger group of five,
All the stupid men
We are today
Still following orders
never catching on.
We will never remember
All of the camps,
And fighting back.

Kintsukuroi

by Reena Prasad

 Kintsukuroi they call it
 The art of mending with gold
 It works on people too-
 too fragile to be recycled
 and too human to be sewed

 An aranjanam and a radiant nettichutti
 to offset the paleness that unslept nights
 had bestowed
 Bangles to hush up the name
 she whispered sometimes
 to the breeze
 Zari edges of her sari to cover up the
 unsteady trip of her feet
 The gilt to light up her husband’s house
 to thaw the strangeness
 and make her feel at ease
 She entered, right foot first
 and was swallowed by obscurity
 Her golden padasarams kept beat
 to the fading music of her subdued ankles
 though an image of a broken silver one
 on a bare chest
 caused cracks in the mirror
 when she looked


Author's note:
aranjanam = waist chain
nettichutti = a head jewel
padasaram = anklets

Blood Moon

by Ralph Monday

This moon, orbiting like the cataract
in a blind man’s eye—russet, coppery,
lensed female oldness—id dreams where
the universe becomes movie myth, no
matter the player’s scene, urban, rural,
all hear the night owl calling above on
experienced wings, for it knows the blood
song played above like an asphalt aria.
In bars, hospital rooms, dance halls where
light mimics salvation—uneasiness
spreads like flu in a crowded elevator.
This moon is a lost Mayan codex that
no one can read, no television prophet
can explain. The apocalypse is not
bare rock knowing both savage heat and cold;
No, the old doom is filtered through each dark
pupil gazing at the sky’s stitched message.

Southern Ice

by Perry L. Powell

Under the magnolia a storm is brewing. The four and twenty blackbirds are holding congress. But so quiet on the surface, what would we suspect? Someone else is always counting out our money.  Nothing different in that. We are running our numbers along new lines these days.  And anyway honey is so sticky on our fingers.  We could not put our three minds on such as that.  Icicles in the south is an irretrievable concept.  Even in the dead of night.  But now it’s morning and the snow falls gently on all our streets. It falls on the streets of the righteous and it falls on the streets of sinners.  It falls and it falls and soon all motion ceases and the quiet is like molasses over all our skins.  I sit at my window and watch the tree.  And when there is but a touch of sun, the blackbirds scatter into the great gray sky.

SYMPATHY SHAG

by Marc Carver

The day after i shaved all my hair off
I started to think that I may be able to use it
She said I looked like a cancer patient
and i was hoping to make peole feel bad
especially the ones who hadn't been very nice to me.
Then i started thinking about women
if i could get talking to a few
i could start talking about how precious and short life is
well you never know
sympathy can take you a long way

Wolves

by Anne Britting Oleson

From beyond the window, cold glass--
their cries are what wakes you.
Right now, high up on the ridgeline,
but coming ever closer:
the howls of the desolate.

The wolves glide outside in the night.
In your mind’s eye you can see them,
even be them, pacing
around the sleeping house.

Their howls are desolate.
They are ghosts, all,
peering in at you,
with eyes burning red
from fury, tears--your eyes.

Around the sleeping house,
prowling, howling, inviting--
and all that separates you,
as you move from unquiet bed
to window, is this cold glass--

reflecting fury, tears, your eyes--
which, as you press your palm to it,
open your throat to join
the wild song, melts away
and you fall to all fours
gliding outside to the night.

kind rose

by Linda M. Crate

i never told you
how much i admired
your talent or how beautiful
i thought you were
because everyone wanted to be
with you or be you
i thought you knew,
and i'm sorry i was too shy
to tell you how much
i loved you;
fell in love with you once
but denied myself
not merely for Christ as
i ought have,
but because i feared
your rejection—
couldn't help myself
you were the girl that
smelled of roses who smiled
kindness at me,
and you inspired me to turn
dreams into reality
wanted you to be proud of me
like i've always been
proud of you;
and i wanted you to be the
fae to whom i gave my heart.

Shatter, or me and you

by Suvojit Banerjee

Here we are, me and you.
Lost in translation ~ blinking like stars, echoing like
the distant tolling of bells on a sleepy hill-town.
My soul craves warmth,
yours - sanity,
ours - dissolution from the fake utopia.
Here we are, me and you,
like bubbles, bursting away into nothingness,
kissing ourselves goodbye everyday under the crimson sun.
Only to meet again, and shatter,
into pieces.

A Gift for Swifty's Moll

by Donal Mahoney

"If you don't like the gun, my dear,
I can exchange it for a negligee but
I've given you many negligees.
I think a gun's important
to have around the house
when I'm at home with the wife.

"Let's say some guy breaks in
looking for your money
or maybe for your honey.
Will you smile and say,
'How can I help you, Mister?
I hope you brought protection.'

"Remember, a gun's your guardian angel
whether you're sleeping or awake.
That's what I told the wife when I
gave her a gun as big as this one.
She needs it for the nights
I'm over here with you."

From My Notebook

by Martha Landman

A year ago I dreamt a girl in a red bikini,
Of no fixed abode, took refuge out of

Wedlock. She dashed for me where I was
Nursing my depression at the back of the bar

I understood wild life, I spent years in animal
Conservation camps; here I had no user guide

I took her hand across the table and swallowed
Our encounter was brief; at ten o’clock she was dead

The idiots around us, in a stir of humanity,
Backed away from the blood patterns on the floor

The moment, eerie and odourless, spread like a chain
Letter: the cop’s writing was curved, single-spaced

His young passion hell-bent on a double episode
His steel caps shone eternally; the Keep Australia

Beautiful-guide in his pocket seemed irrelevant
Her beauty dwindled, compromised her reputation

Adrenaline pumped wild with possibility, my breath
Collapsed at the indiscreet shake of my shoulder —

The whole in the door doesn’t match, I heard
My wife’s voice in rich aroma: “Coffee Dear!”

Brittle Handles

by Perry L. Powell

Reach out and it’s missing. Reach out and all you touch is gritty air. Reach out and there is thick coat ice on all your branches and your work is unavailable.  Your work is unavailable and your power is out.  You have no power to play. And no play to power. When nipple to nipple, where are your warm ones? Reach out to remember. Not owning the world, you cannot fix it. Not fixing the world, you cannot own it. Not the world you own.  Not the fix you’ve blown. Not broken off like a figurine still on the shelf. So once this tree has fallen over your lines, you reach out and what’s to hold? Yet again here you go riding your bike in all directions over black ice.

Guardians

by Douglas Polk

grandpa and grandma were guardians of Spring and Summer,
working hard year around to keep the spirit alive,
preserving the sun in shelves of jars,
in a cellar dark and dank,
the taste of chokecherry and strawberry,
stored to battle the gloom of winter,
canned corn and beans,
evidence of the growing power of the summer time sun,
and wine of apple and grape,
and even some dandelion,
to keep the spirit light,
and the body warm,
in dark winter nights,
all the work of grandpa and grandma,
guardians of the Summer time sun.

ILSTON WOOD

by Byron Beynon

Returning again to the footpath
we followed it through the wood,
sounds of a nearby stream,
a fluidity of notes and fresh tones
for our breathing shadows,
alert to the surviving senses all around.
The sculpted faces of the trees,
with nature's canopy
wide-awake under which to meet
a memory of something real,
spreading towards a darkening green.
Swallow holes, summer banks,
birds we could not see,
with wild flowers rewinning the landscape;
this threatened gallery
where history blends
with the vital air,
a secret undergrowth
waiting patiently,
the way through
trodden by the ages
that brought us here.

Lines

by Nancy May

spring sunset
hanging from a feeder
hunger birds

On a Line Too Lightly Drawn to See

by Todd Mercer

The fire in the hearth dies down
so the small talk ashes over.
Delia fights her tendency
to spiral intellectual,
to unwrap the hour,
defeat the mood by
shifting into the role
of omniscient observer.
Delia’s cursed with heavy knowledge,
field studies of Game Theory,
she breaks down behavior mysteries,
can map pedestrian plans
of conventional men
with If/Then diagrams.
Anyway the coals glow orange,
and ahead is slumber before long,
or else insomnia,
a float in anomie,
an anesthetic fog.
Delia realizes
what happens next
is not of epic importance.
“Bring it.
Go home,” she says,
malaised,
ambivalent.
“Go, go,”
she murmurs
from some incredible distance,
“Go, go, bring it home.”

Pirate J's (Outside Looking In)

by Shaquana Adams

I wonder what it's like to work at Pirate J's...
Serving fish all day to strangers...

Side of hushpuppies, side of fries.
They don't care, it's your food.

But do they care who you bring?
No why? Who cares?

But would they remember if you came in
with someone different than usual?

I suppose...maybe.
Why?

An interracial couple might draw an
eye or two if only for curiosity.

(Silence)
...No one cares

No one cares about what?
I think it's interesti--

No one cares about a white boy who once came in
with a black girl, but now dines with a white girl!

(Silence)
Whether they care or not... they noticed.
~~~
I think about that old conversation
every time I go to that restaurant.

A part of me always stings
knowing that other people knew.

One day I'll ask them what it's like to work at Pirate J's
and they will tell me "It's interesting".

LEGEND OF A DREAM

by Richard Schnap

Where is the mountain you aimed to climb
Its sun-speckled peak higher than the clouds?

(It turned into a hill all humbled from rain
Its smaller summit much easier to reach.)

Where is the hill you settled to scale
Its simpler stair worn smooth by the wind?

(It turned into a rock just higher than my head
Where I wouldn’t fall far if I plunged back to earth.)

Where is the rock so creviced and cracked
Its surface offering an effortless ascent?

(It turned into a pebble I hold in my palm
And softly caress as I make other plans.)

And where is the pebble polished yet plain
You always would carry like a small precious pearl?

(I gave it away to a boy with bright eyes
And told him that someday he’d understand why.)