north dakota

by Linda M. Crate

song of the whipperwill
golden grasses, warm summers
plains singing psalms of oblivion
there you'd find me one summer's
week hiding behind a smile
when worries mounted my shoulders
and babbling brooks seemed an
eternity away from reaching yet still
I refused to give up hope for she
blossoms in my heart no matter the
locale I have always been a field.

I Think You Have Beautiful Eyes

by James Babbs

I told her
and she smiled at me
then she kissed me
softly on the lips
I felt her body shift
there were other things
I wanted to say
but when I thought about them
they just sounded dumb
we need more wine
I said
and I held my empty glass
up toward the light
are you trying to get me drunk
she asked
of course I said
and it made her laugh
she felt warm next to me
I leaned in and gave her
a long slow kiss
my head felt strange
for a moment
I thought I was floating
it must’ve been the wine

Comradery

by E.K. Smith

She squints at me
  Pillow-faced
And releases towards the vivid lull
A comma lines her Brown Sugar Fingers
Blistering with anomaly and exception
under my grasp,
It has not been an amaretto-and-strawberry life
  as we'd both hoped
My anxious reflection through her grace
Repeats that back to me
Bleeding out thickened thunderstorms
And warding them off,
A final gift.

suburbs, dusk, the creature waits for something

by Ben Adams

he sits in sweat-damp
clothing, types
words to himself

the heat crawls on
like some ancient, mechanized
insect

he thinks of doing the washing
of blackening his hands under the bonnet
of the rusting ford out front

the 4 cylinder '79 motor
kicking over
once more

he thinks of starting things
he thinks of tumblers filled with ice
and bourbon

and there is the brown grass backyard

and on the clothesline
a single
grubby tea
towel, hanging stiff
and dry
from weeks
in the sun.

The best way

by Gopali Chakraborty Ghosh

strychnine
adenocarcinoma
brain aneurysm
under a bus
morphine
cerebral stroke
RTA
Rabies
cerebral malaria
monkshood
hemlock
Cardiac arrest
or in sleep
dreaming of you

Love 'n peace

by Anna Maria  

Love keeps searching
till it  finds.

Then it stretches
its aching feet
lies down,
sleeps in peace.

Nana’s Apples

by Paul Tristram

When I was but a child before the age of ten
my Nana lived across the road from us.
In the Summertime me and my brother
would call in there whilst playing in the street.
She would always be in her kitchen
and would greet us with a thick Welsh accent

“Hiya boys, do you fancy a bit of apple, then?”

She was a strong, powerful woman
not just physically but in character also.
She would walk to the fruit bowl on the table
and fetch back a single green apple.
I’d whisper under my breath to my brother

“Watch her face, she won’t even flinch!”

She would rip that apple in half in one go
with no sign of effort or strain at all
and always completely down the middle.

“Imagine that apple was your head, mun!”

I would tease my brother as we walked out
through the backdoor chomping on apple.

Years later I was drinking with a girl
and I was telling her about my Nana’s apples,
she went to the kitchen and got 2 red ones
and  tried to get me to try it myself.
I told her that there was no way in hell,
that I was 37 years old and if I couldn’t
I’d never be able to forgive myself as a man.
So she had a try and failed to do it!
And I bet my Nana was looking down
from her big kitchen in the sky
making Welsh pasties and watching it all
with a big old smile upon her face.

Just Nickels

by Ryan Hardgrove

Wake up early
watch her dress before work
without glasses
a fog of flesh and fabric
go down stairs
after she leaves
feel for the bathroom switch
her fragrance lingers
hesitates
wants to stay
with me
within the home

Stare at the toilet
the porcelain
marshmallow yellowed
browned in the bowl
flush
soap
water
smile
don’t smile
yeah, don’t smile
you look better that way
you look real

Want to get some things done today
get gas
apple juice
cigarettes
coffee
find a roach amongst
the pebbles strewn
across thin upholstery
beneath my feet
            feel for a lighter
            between the seat
            and the door
only sticky nickels
no lighter
no dimes
no quarters
just nickels

Village Sunset and Morning Birdsong

by Charlotte Hoare

Last night the sky was bleeding.
Tonight it is burning.
Fire!
Beyond the rooftops
Along the tree line.
Red sky at night, shepherd's delight.
Gleeful vandalism.
Joy at the knife crime and the arson:
There's nothing else happening.

The birds jump
in and out of synchronisation.
One voice so much louder than the rest.
Piercing
Like the alarm
from the car with the smashed windows.
All dreams of adventure
are shattered on the kerb
and stacked like memorial flowers
against the flat tyre.

waiting for thunder

by Ben Adams

images flash in the mind
like silent lightening
left waiting for the thunder

(these words echo thus)

remnants of an unconstricted world
swirling black-water beneath
a speckled moon
minor chords whisper from islands in the night:
from the chaos, then, this tune—

(that is you)
is that you I see?
or your shadow, or your ghost?
your voice I hear, but muffled
as though some door had just swung closed

what does it matter, anyhow?
what did it matter
then, or now?

(it matters what is lost)

that which is chaos—
curious energy formed
from place, and time, and naming:

the lightening joined, then, by a rumble
and this for the explaining

this, which is
cold rain, and winter
expression paralysed
and splintered

this, which is for then, forever—
what does it matter, anyhow?
what does it even matter.

(it matters, it matters, the thunder said)

to wake upon a stranger’s bed—
to know them well, their hair, their skin
to know their name but not your own
the weight of all the worlds brought down
better, then, to wake alone?

amid the ash, and fractured bone
to feel a trembling in the pre-dawn air
the fluttering wings of birds entombed

(creatures trapped, by time’s march caught)

remnants of the daylight world,
the big sky world—
its hidden weight now pressing down
upon the stones upon their backs
their wings hemmed in, their voices drowned

remnants of an unrefracted world
that did not see itself in glass
or pass some half familiar face
and never break its stride

(the lightning flashes by our eyes)

what does it matter, life
or death—
all turns to ash, and sand, and earth

(it matters what is lost)

and this, the cost,
the holding back—
the muffled voice of someone else:
the knowledge that there was no need
for what we spoke, or thought, or felt

(it matters     it matters)

remnants only
remnants of
remnants just of something else
formed in words, in time, in blood
imagined thunder, what we felt

(and what was lost)

I remember     I remember
     I remember swirling water
I remember crashing rain
I remember you the same

lightning flashes by our eyes
images before our eyes
waiting for the noise of thunder
with the rain collapsing
at our feet—

but the thunder
does not come, and then
it is too late.     it is too late.

false prophet

by Linda M. Crate

lament me not your sorrow
I know you to be a false prophet
and I'll not swallow your lies
as easily as I once did; I will
no longer be naive I must consider
all the times you've cried wolf  —
I cannot believe there actually was
one, but you've got my apologies
if tomorrow the fields are crying crimson
with your tears but until then I'll
keep my distance and skepticism lit.

Coma

by Donal Mahoney

Sleet on the turnpike
in the middle of the night 
but I keep driving,
both hands on the wheel,
nowhere to pull off,
and a yellow bus
comes over the line
and kisses my truck.
That's all I remember.
Now I'm in bed,
wired to things,
unable to move,
listening to a doctor 
telling my wife,
"It's been two weeks,
no improvement."
He asks her nicely
if we should let him go,
the dimwit bastard.
If I could, I'd scream 
but I can't even
wiggle my toes.

One in a million

by Marc Carver

I have been to the gym twice today
made love to a beautiful woman
if only in my mind
found money on the floor
been gifted more money and walked away from it
let someone else have it.
Now i am wrapping up the day with a few beers
What a day
give me more of these

Days Again

by John Pursch

Always in I’llbequirky donut house, waffling between timelines, Lola renews her vows of loyalty to state-fed broth supply, singing facial hymns of old anxiety and anguished disregard for friendly foes, sliding into past regression status fate, picking up a subtle cue of weeks in slippage, timing gearbox grinding, loosened into further plunge, buckled feet dissolving, thighs become transparent, wonder vaguely now how Montauk Chair became delivery boy semantic chase machine, pinned to extradition’s trace, greeted by authorities at luminous temporal border…

Began as weekend jaunt per bureaucratic watchdog, simple loose-end journey, inner outage, double-time bubble spiral into Raw Swell’s delusory epidermal zone; swept to Towels, marked congealed, bucketed to Days Ago per frothing manic protocol, reaped digression requisite to satiate supernal norms, body-bagged to Montauk wobble, Merry Itchy music, peep shots, still return beyond the Untied States. Inferred pleasure subtly brought to bear through diplomatic duct tape, but decades in a dusty villa dominate, all for dog erasure, disavowal of future lives, strict proximity lunch from Untied States to statute heaven, haven-free beyond relapsed authority.

Phasing into conscious feed, Lola’s in a dingy bar, sweaty, caked with dust, juke box nonsense chatter, cerveza preparada, how did handgun, revolving walls, low stucco ceiling, someone groping gringo, staggering to barefoot stumble out to blinding windblown streets of Eighties autos, braying orchestrated extras, atmospheric jumble, dimmest memes of old-time tin-hunk fusion, definitely not her pastiche, but who can deny their own pet saga, drawn from textured gravity’s welled-up tomb? No one argues with reality in Days Ago, urged to live along a lungful at a twisted time, springing momentary headlock, told to hope for rural lease, mealy funnel to urban hell-hole hopscotched into time-disease vibration, decimal skin pries coup d’etat along with bodied hurl, fallow till an early moonrise, yearning for detached secretion dues. She bumps along a pastel wall, wooden walkway, tries to stay in simple lag-free focus, heading off the blurs, leer avoidance, sees her handheld deal in progress, tosses gun to random hombre, clatters into wood, amusing local nervous boiling sky drives into shade, Federales roll to stop in granulated cinders, pop the trunk to vending class occlusion closets, flicker of periphery resounds and she’s filtered forward, furrowed brow discerning silent integration’s fanning static, fleeting footfalls carry into transfer doorway now secluded, hands return in concrete faucet drop.

Jazz quartet in ritzy flat overlooks Gulf of Days Ago sunrise from balcony trying to resolve street noise ambient monoxide must be ten stories up in Cannedcon sound of distant rocket strikes horizon plumes adrift muffled mortar rounds falling in the city. Party raging, stands from sofa only to be tackled headlong dive by wildly wasted woman in failing sundress mouth-to-mouth pinned to wall-to-wall tangling tongues lotta lipstick straddled and strangely stiff recalling Days Again technology prone to bad boundaries healthy conclusion she’s a man not her but Lola herself is wooden subjected to timeline seepage now reliving some pseudorandom dude’s bestial morning by design mistake or chance who knows no controlling the recursive calls just lie back and enjoy it people stumbling spilling tequila on her laughing dancing this could go on till noon she’s suddenly no it can’t stone arching oblivion release to battered daydream of scintillating feet chattering in buckled shoes thighs coalesce in visible loins clenched hands leather armrests body landing flash of Montauk restraints smiling to operators hazy beeline from Toothy Canned Sequences direct to Towels, wearing a dress no less…

“Yes, yes, Miss Kirov, all better now, let’s see… Return address The Puntagain, Buggy Fatima Metro, Watchingstoned, T.V.”

Sodden whirling metro brakes behind familiar voice: “Buggy Fatima…” Automatic rising to leather boots trudging in unison soft bell snap of doors onto steep eternal escalator turnstile giving way to streets of old T.V., hailing cab…

Winter Storm

by Douglas Polk

Mother Nature enforces her will,
ice and snow,
keep the car from ascending the hill,
trapped and at her mercy,
hoping hers,
 a loving disposition.

The Flood

by Doug Draime

The levee was breaking
and a call went out
over the local radio station
for all able bodied men
and any male children
that could lift
at least
forty pounds,
to come down to
the levee to help
fill and stack sandbags
to reinforce the old
dilapidated walls. I piled
on a flatbed trunk
with my grandfather and
some neighbors.

The sky was black
and ominous, ready to
split open again
with thunder and
another massive downpour. We
got to 1st  street
across from the levee,
where four or five other flatbed trucks
were parked, men and kids
getting off them, and one
truck already empty
heading back out
to pick up more people. Women
were serving coffee, donuts,
and hot chocolate; makeshift
tables were lined up for
a block down 1st street. There were
about ten men filling sandbags
and sealing them up. We had
gotten off the truck and the
National Guard was directing
everyone to form a line
in front of the men filling the sandbags,
to pass them down to a few
other men standing by
and ready to stack them against
the levee walls.

We could all see and
hear the raging Wabash
flowing and busting
over the top of the walls. I was
only nine, skinny and barely
able to pass the bags
down the line. We heard
shouts from
the National Guard,
that there was another crack
farther down the wall. Almost
simultaneously it started
to  rain, falling down on us
like spilling buckets. I don’t know
how I passed those bags,
my arms and legs and hands
were throbbing with pain.

It was a long time before we
got a break, as others fresh from the trucks
replaced us on the line. I
wolfed down four powered donuts
and a cup of
hot chocolate. And just as we
were being directed to form another
line, the National Guard
on bullhorns were
shouting again and this time, that the dam
a couple of miles down
river was breaking and that we all
had to EVACUATE THE
AREA IMMEDIATELY and go back
to our homes. We scrambled like monkeys
and piled back on the trucks, and I looked back
as we were hauling ass out of there
and watched people shouting
and running for vehicles and just
plain running helter-skelter in every direction;
the garbled sound of bullhorns echoing and
vibrating through the lights from the trunks
in the deluge of
pouring rain.

The Biggest Burger in 1950

by Tom Hatch

I danced backwards up into the sky
Drank from the malted milk light house
Tilting it from sitting on the moon
Captured light enough viewed my beginning
From two universes which ones I do not know
If I paid attention should have enlist help from the sun
In the milky way I paid attention!!
when I was born coming from
The space between these stars and
Two lusting young bodies of passion on their own grand scale
In womb nourishment from burgers, fries
And milky way shakes
Puffed cigarettes in back seats of cars
Woody Herman on the radio Stan Getz on
Sax on the airwaves into space just
Passed me by setting on the
Moon watching my life coming up
On queue

The Visitor

by Laura Grodin

I call you the phoenix lights,
but they only see blues and reds
reflecting on crumbled soil. Nothing above but miles
of hollow air. You hover without touch,
the buzz of air pushed beneath you, floating
above a sand dune you’ve never known.

There’s something odd when I look up,
I can’t finish my cereal, the bowl in my hands
is unlike grey plates circling. Vibrations in
my slippers on the wet grass, a button undone
on my flannels, near my neck so I can open wide.
You’re coming down soon.

Flying in V’s like birds of another species,
There is a notable emptiness between earth and soil.
Tufts of air brush my cheeks, hair static.
Stricken from memory you’ll land, nestled
on moonlit craters, cracked from the constant
beating of breath.

It’s a Magical World

by Emma Ambos

Man-junkies swinging
the streetcops like tennis shoes
up the high-wires

they balancebeam their arms
and puncture pattern the ectoplasm
like laces, Anne’s and blood clots

the clouds they hang from
like martyrs, they moan
and fight the bit-

Riders of Leprosy
gods of their Own
crucified on the hot-shot

A Day Later

by Jeremy Marks                            

Bones glistening with fat are lying flat and carelessly stacked in a smoldering pit on the beach. Scampering beyond this bowl of ash and sand are the last smoldering cinders of pine; they dance among the scattered thorax of Blue Crabs; the cracked and crevassed.

The fire feasters were too full and now the gulls will have their way; they loop, descend, hover and spear on raised feet. There is meadow hay encircling this small place; it snares ribbons of smoke along its stalks.

The bay is water barely blue -the fog vapor is gray. Morning is a mixing of water and mist in a dim overlay of weak sunlight. First there is no shore, and then there is no beach. There is just so much bay.

On a strange loblolly branch, held high and newly dead, a pair of bald eagles chitters. They grind their beaks to bark in blench dawn; the sun front-lighting their milk white domes. When they stop, they wait; both pairs of eyes catch the silent gray light drawn like a shade up their yellow bills. The night is shed like old skin.

The eagles spy the offshore with its shallows; like osprey, they know how the fish go. A salt breeze moves through the trees; anchored skiffs knock together and there are buoys.

The Mystery

by Gorakhnath Gangane

I live in the sands of the desert
I live in the traces of a woman
I live in the criminal minds
I live in the genius's brains
I live in the healing plants
I live in the ferocious fauna
I live in the masters and slaves at a time
I live in the history, present, future and science
I live in all elements... water,earth, air, rains, storms
I defy time before and after
I was there before everything came into being
I would be there after everything would have vanished
they call me mystery
yes, I am undying mystery.

Pocketing Fire

by Patrick McGee

He had fire in his eyes,
the man that took me
to a power station
to break inside.
His eyes spoke their flame.
One last episode before life
overtakes.

I climbed rusted ladders,
crawled under rotted boards,
threw rocks at glass,
rolled on concrete,
covered my skin
with dust and ash.
He led me to the smokestack
and we climbed and climbed
and climbed, the iron rungs

sweaty and warm.  We stood
at the rim, the earth spread out.
The spotlights blazed,
the sirens blared.
This is living, he said,
baring his teeth
to suck in the hot air,
filthy and raw.  I laughed
when I pushed him
from the edge.
They took him away
in the trunk of a car,
drove north to the station.

all is blindness

by Ali Znaidi

Moon, trying to assemble its pixels,
in fact, no clear pics at all,
instead the pictures are coming out
like leathery rinds of citruses
through the pale shadows of

ash/

leaking drops of the moon’s
lemonade [a drop of truth may appear]

but no aid at all
tonight the moon convened all
protection softwares:

truth’s pictures/
infected

all is blindness,
& we all see the truth w/
shattered glasses.

Dipsomania

by John Pursch

Sipped triumvirates sop up painless time, capped with foamy seizures, hopping on bored carotid easels, flooding occipital blowholes with sink remains, fraying venous tantrums for the toys in extant motorcar chives. Too handy for dueling bout crops, a minimal lime rolls to pasty shins, catches a flaking pin’s chemise, and touts emotional vestibules, sacking equine redactions for woozy maritime clay compote, fed to tunneling terrapins in dusky wartime cuticles. Bark means it’ll swoon at sunrise, etching addiction’s brutish slaw cot with lacquered ascetic breath, coping when form-fitting navigators impeach an epaulette’s born acidity vent. Crucibles evoke premonitory brewhouse strudel, splashing cordoned hermetic seals with edelweiss in four-bar roaming quartiles of tertiary prunes, uttering pinnacles in spawned elation’s bony onset, screamed at wizened seagulls, irritating jangled limbs of hideous grout. Held for dotted tenderloin immersion, knotty ovations pine for cheerful counter girls, speckled with fallen sod, infused with rolling tinsel tunes in tubules of amiable illusion’s stanched cumin fumes. Saffron cores emulsify cemented Valvoline, splatter searchlight conifers with warning pelts, and fructify a chosen hamstring’s sentient vapor, issuing forked similitude to thickets, charging half-note umbrage for grueling grape-noose sybarites. Idle hemlock lickers efface autumnal racecar flutes with crawling stoppage, hedging garrulous odysseys before amassed pendulums can imitate a frozen truck, swapping roadkill for gutterball delight, deloused and turned to cider in the pouring rain. Slashed swap meat fouls created cues, scuttling an octal mumbler’s venal call to backstage bigamy, savoring a silent laundry lip’s glossy take-out tune. How far from dipsomaniacal trigger-happy pilfering can foolishly squandered legions of squirming germinal voyeurs succumb to any sequestered highway totems of turnpike turncoats, of looming luminescent lucidity, of evergreen goblets in focal disarray’s overthrow, of overflowing integral champions in dateline distress? Deeply pleased to glimpse eternal hankies, knickers, and cummerbunds in cucumbers of penumbral embrace, togas hiked inches above the waterline’s tumbleweed coyly spin oldies, drumming down vernal vestiges of waistline stew, camping out in pawned official cufflink grounds, filming nebulous wattage in turntable hues, clamping detective moons on noontime vigils in barstool burlesque motives, similar to waypoint follicles and tongued garb nests, beyond an asymmetric tree line’s furtive grace. How the extra clipper shops erode in avionic twilight, shifting naps to licensed sight, puzzling enzyme salesmen with tracked eventual diatribe; all for teapot doghouse crews to pinch an emissary’s beeswax hint of stallion overcoat recusal, blanched in sutured corrugation’s vinyl itch.

Campo de’ Fiori

by Bryan Murphy

Filippo was in pretty good shape, until they burnt him.

Of course, seven years of imprisonment had taken a toll – his leg muscles had atrophied and his eyes would water in sunlight – but for a man past fifty, well, he looked as though he’d be around for years to come. And that voice: loud and level, a debater’s voice. Not to mention the man’s mind, sharp and lucid as his tongue. Ah, his tongue.  The weakest part of his whole body, the only part he couldn’t control.  Even that was healthy enough when I examined it. They brought the friar to us, to our hospital on the island in the river. Wanted to be sure he’d survive until the end of his holy inquisition. Some of his holy inquisitors looked more likely to snuff it than he did. Tortured consciences. Brought him here regularly over the years. Always me who examined him, until – Holy Father!

Yes, we talked. Mostly he talked and I listened. No, I didn’t absorb any of his heretical ideas, all that rubbish about life on other worlds. He did teach me some of his memory tricks. No, it’s not witchcraft. Believe me, I’ve seen a few witches in my time. Tell you one thing, I’ll never be able to forget him. Never forget a word he said. And he says plenty. Dominican, he is. Was. Intellectuals. Not like us plain John-of-God people. We just tend to the sick. It’s true we learn anatomy and cures, but mostly we just talk and listen to our charges. And pray for them.

So, memory and anatomy and obedience. I’ll get by with them in the secular world. Saecula saeculorum. What a world. Sixteen hundred years after Our Lord came to it. And left it. Poor, forsaken Filippo Bruno:  our Brother Giordano.

BLACK CLOUDS

by Neelam Chandra

Do the dark black clouds
Really know
How much hidden energy they have
In themselves?

I believe they don’t.

For if they did
They would not wander
Over the hills and the seas
In quest and pursuit
Of happiness…

After meandering from place to place
When the realization finally dawns upon them
They just summon their internal inherent energy
And generate some
Beautiful drops of rain
Which sizzle and soak
The entire world
In their drizzle and delight
Thus kindling and sparking
A new cycle
Of self-realization
On all those mortals
Who are bathed
By those celestial drops…

THE SOUND RETURN

by Byron Beynon

The tide has turned its face
from the shore, once more
the herring-gulls feed and quarrel
on the luminous mud
where lonely boats, abandoned and still,
wait, listening for the sound
return of the sea that will come
like the end of a journey.

Upright figures that stand on rocks,
the stranger who digs
for bait or for something he has detected,
the hopes and fears which are his alone.
The rose-blush of air enters
the bay on this invigorating day,
sand-ribbed and rubbed grains
peel away time, a flight of sky
seen before the rolling mist returns
again to listen for the marooned and mysterious cry.

MAY EVERY FOLD BE HOLY

by David Rawson

He can fold you into sugar,
into a howling thing,
into the ant that carries
so much more than itself, but even
fifty times your weight
is a limitation. Each fold is your weight
compressed, until your matter
does not matter, until your mass is
something holy, twitching.

You were the first
cancer. This petition you are holding
declares it. Your wife's hair
has fallen out. She made this clear.
She is the officer who fired God.
He is not so oblivious.
The one who advises you
dictates your gifts. You are a lump
of sugar she borrowed
she cannot return.
When the days bleed,
you are a sometimes dog
eating more than you
can carry.

Of a clown whose body crumples
as complying
 to an unseen hand, who is always
 about to ask, why did you lose
your virginity to "brothers on a hotel bed"?

When he shakes
your hand and says, “I'm the kid
but call me Michael” and then screams
“I'm a young man.”
When you stopped watching Twin Peaks
when the dwarf wouldn't stop
shaking.
When you read the note, "I have taken all
your spoons," you roll
a chocolate covered coffee bean under
your tongue,
Press down, keep
pressing.

When she said, "I was sick
long before," point to the kid,
That lump in the corner.
He can fold a paper
ever so neatly,
As many folds
as there are stars,
Until you can no longer
stand
The density.
You
feel
the lump
of something,
a Schrodinger
laugh. Maybe.

She has measured herself
out of the day, and you
in the mound, the only
worker left.

Night

by Marc Carver

I woke up in the middle of the night
my heart was racing and i thought
this could be it.
My number might be up
but after a piss and and some water
it started to slow down
and i knew
that i would make it through another night.

V DAY POEM

by Gopali Chakraborty Ghosh

 

Harlotwhorecallgirlescort
Mistressconcubinesexslavesubservient
Fiancéewifegirlfriendpartner
Ardhanginipatnistreemahisi
All
Valentines.

WE ARE LOVERS WHO FORGOT DINOSAURS

by David Rawson

were fat, shedding feathers, sweating oil,
flicking tongues, bodies the color of cotton,

singing out love to trees that knew bruising.
Ours was a love of footprints, the pruning of love

for millennia, until the ice age almost pruned it out
completely. Ours is a love that was meant to shiver.

We are lovers who forgot there was meat in there,
that cartilage even is a kind of love.

We scattered at the sight of eye-line ankles, the trees
that bite before they kiss.

We will always know a love taller than us.
We will always duck when it begins to snow.

I do not know what I seek

by A.V. Koshy

I do not know what I seek.

In the midst of my island
this spreading pool of loneliness
widens
engulfing every green thing
on this auspicious day,
overflowing its borders.

The fish too escape.

Only a lone rock remains
jutting out like an ugly tooth
splashed by black waves
in the dying rays of the setting sun.

It's another love I spay.

Forget Cooking Tonight, Baby!!!!

by Paul Tristram

 Finish up your shopping in the supermarket
whilst I'm finishing my 2nd beer and 1st cigar
 in this Wintertime beer garden across the road.
 It's not raining for a change!
We'll put the shopping bags in the car
and leave it parked where it is.
 I want to hold hands with you again
just like we did when we were a-courting
and stroll through this shining neon city.
 I want to kiss you with alcohol and excitement
dancing upon our eager breath again.
 I want to put on my top hat and have you slide a dress
 (which we've only just shoplifted!)
over your jeans and take you to the Opera.
 Then afterwards we’ll sit in the gutter
of the red-light district sharing a KFC,
dribbling hot chicken gravy all over my crotch
as we roll back and fore.
 Laughing like demented children in a crazy circus
as the working girls blow kisses at us
as they pass and say "Awwwww!"
 I want to take you to that midnight burger shack
down by the harbour and cast a handful of coins
and wishes into the blind harmonica player’s tip-cap.
Borrow his harp off him for just 4 and a half minutes
so I can blow magical, musical kisses all over your head.
 Shake those ringlets around your shoulders
and open up that birthday present smile,
show me once again the reason that I made you my wife. x

Pearls

by Tom Hatch

Strung together these letters are pearls
Spun into bright words
Around your lovely neck resting from holding
Smiles from that land of orchids where
Love books glow different colors from page to page
Flipping thru a rainbow reflects on the outer
Mist of sultry clouds of life with you belongs to us

On the rise of soft breasts become these words
Before they are written my life with you perhaps
There are angels in these words of pearls resting
In my life with you on arms and wrists of
Passion above your head the string of pearls
Clasped in submissions tablet with words
In mother of pearl our time is in your hands

Of your breathing inhaled movement
The velvet light of Vermeer across
Your back lays the sentences of your
Splendor, loveliness vast of centuries
Past and future cultures learn and learned
From your vocabulary of a naked empress
Kallos in Greek, breagha in Scottish
As the heavens welcome our moon
That become many full into the words
A necklace wrapped around us pearls
That brings a message of my life with you
The birds of two the swans of two
At swim two birds

Mirrored in lake of fresh water pearls
Your long neck image reflected words in water
With origins of the middle ages are pearls
Of history along length of downy swan neck
Stroking with tender greed of words
Stroking with tender greedy hands
In my head soon to be part of the pearls
Popping out one after the other to live
In your place of moist petals

Fingering the pearls of these words strung
Around you in me and my life with you
Your toes are pearls to your
Magnetic eyes are pearls tricking
Me in seconds change to pearls of go
Ahead do it to me with me
With pearls of words
Solidly the pearls have become
A sword cutting passion

A necklace queened as I hold
My largest pearl ever is you
For you but then you stand
Behind me but then in front with me
Proximity of pearls slaves
It has to be written here there
Are words never spoken that are
The finest pearls as whispered
Secrets never told it does not
End here as pearls are round
Eternity in galaxy to galaxy
From man and woman
Here on earth you and me
Hold and told of pearls
The universe lasting saying forever
The indifference and indolence
Gone, gone to become lasting love for all
As pearls are around us all

Laying upon our back till mornings
Pearls
Stops a beginning that has no end

Soul Hook

by Al Ortolani

Pop lies in Room 217; tomorrow

drapes like a curtain between us.

He sleeps with both hands crossed

against his chest. I try not

to believe in omens, but voices

whisper through the hospital, central

air shifting the ceiling tiles,

an escaping soul, spirit rapping.

Once, a hook was fastened to

a dying man's throat, a thin metal finger

curved above the chin, over the mouth,

to catch the soul's

invisible escape, a sudden gasp

of breath, a flattening of lungs.

Nothing is familiar anymore

except the beep and click of monitors.

Pop stirs momentarily, opens

his mouth as if to speak. I slip

a shard of ice onto his tongue,

touch Chapstick to his lips.