To Hear the Stonesafter William Carlos Williams

by Emily Strauss

Silence is
a retreat of will
leaving behind
the city and flocks
going out to red
canyon walls
then no more road.
Rising at dawn's
thin moon, sheer
cliffs hold the night's
coolness, hear the call
of a lone canyon wren—
but where?
Ochres are bleached
by afternoon, the heat
rising in waves
the stream bed
littered with crushed
sagebrush
and the smooth walls
releasing
a hushed breath.

PALEONTOLOGY

by Elliot Ian Ross

I’m in a sprawl
Drying out

Letting time stroll
Soaking in

Chin rubbing the carpet
Of the new apartment
Wasting light

Beetles at this level, they’re cows
Elephants, I feel them surviving
Like swelling peaches.

Persisting in massiveness being
Dinosaurs lost and I’m a universe
Big.  Awkward waste of space
Fleshy. Lumpy. Wrong.

Fermenting under soursweet lemon light
Shunning time.

While beetle flashes blueblack and green
Volkswagen on tiptoe
Primed to combust.

JFK-18

by John Pursch

Lola’s welded into mache warpage, unison’s only shot put, flexing brainy hymnal tangent seas with ample oracular veins, breeding thought patronage in baronal study feats, plying nap landings into stickered figurines, plotting a cursory traction speech for bruiser-bottled belly dancers. What paused for pineal piloting a hindered yore echo wheel know surface against a ghastly altar’s plural freeze, in mottled grassy lanes, sideswiped in blurry courtyard meals, fiercely reductive over stumped urns.

“Heavenly mess,” she mumbles softly, scarcely audible to her minutia charter’s blenderbox, recording caught neural glimpses of slightly divergent worlds, ulterior resting ponds for loss, formulaic expectorants of glacial undertones be ramrodded into exploding fodder wheels.

Turning to finery’s cruising dowry, she clears to temporal gust’s ontological seas, sets local delimiters to penguin stretch, androidal to control, granting unbuckled aisle walk, timeless drifting now to railcar cigarettes, rolling hash junket coach retreats, laminar eyes foveal in distant piston ice. Shifting to sudden blotter, she muses on trollop points, an embassy of fine wine and sheer embattled grace, her face flecked with tensor chatter, iconic Andalusian steam.

“Two more circuits and I’ll stick for weakling art or dendritic trough, city hovering sate,” mumbling slowly to no one in particle.

Confidantes argue for tighter broach patrol, hinting at a pyre, but she talks it all in chesty gout surmise, tossing back in altered beau loll suit, enjoined in show. Whimper they rally spleef waddle terpsichore enough, eatery on clear jive, or fooling wash code scenery on here; null weigh owe is Lola’s sham durable she’s on glide path for JFK-18.

Kabuki’s climbing down to level dreams on dearest knight’s lunging armoire, whence he’d fell on oily Thames a hand-fed yore ago, Aegean spiels of wade-locked regrets be sidewalk sequestered till horrible livery starters cry to referential tufa blogs. He’s elsewise head epoch, shamed a tad, in mightily loose fee entrancement for a pilot, opining glossy yangs of yin, lifting on unbalanced dorsals, hatching carousels for RFK-26.

His trajectories are ill beyond rebuttal, hefting neighbor mist a pleat, hallways bringing his million home safe unsound, open windows fluttering interstellar bleats. Sum dimly lit dung about the timing of time travel, net even Juana seizes per this loaded day, and she deigned to sign the foisted missionary stew that spurted this holy enterprise, this migrational craving, that’s brought a planet back from starvation’s comely headwaters, to brink of premise.

Snow tableau undone, Cowboy Ike’s bearing strung and eyesore true, staid for the lust and heftiest of our tertiary whirls. Thinking, dreaming of a banner drawl, Ike deftly sends them packing, crossing countless county splines, spilling empirical antics in dotted blinds, filling grapes with lottery clues, splashing scarlet vintage from spores to spiny pleasure roots, gushing millions at pot roast hostel dues, ribald and ensconced in soda.

Summer in a Sacred Valley

by Lisa M. Drago

Indiana Jones was a liar:  There was nothing glamorous about archaeological fieldwork.  The work was boring and tiring, so I practiced meditation techniques.  I hated the mosquitoes, so I carried a can of OFF! in the pocket of my camie pants.  I hated the burning sun on the back of my neck, so I slathered on sunscreen several times a day.

As an Anthropology major at the University of Hawaii, my thirst for adventure had prodded me to contact the Bishop Museum in Honolulu.  I’d heard the museum was organizing a team of archaeologists and students to dig test pits in Halawa Valley.  This struck me as an exciting way to spend my summer vacation.

For years, there’d been talk of building a new highway to connect Oahu’s southern coast with the windward side of the island.  This highway would cut more than an hour out of travel time from one side of the island to the other, a great help in particular for anyone traveling between Pearl Harbor Naval Base or Hickam Air Force Base and Kaneohe Marine Corps Base.

The heated debate over building the H-3 highway centered around cost, of course, but also on cultural resource management.  Since the new road would run through Halawa Valley, an area sacred to Native Hawaiians and important to environmentalists, there was great public outcry over the proposal.

The museum informed me there would be three, ten-person crews assigned to work ten-hour days in various parts of the valley.  Two weeks later, I joined a crew that had already been working during a preliminary phase.  My first task, as a newbie, was backfilling the old test pits.  Sweating and straining, I soon realized I wasn’t as physically fit as I’d assumed.

The best part of the day was lunch break.  We piled into the filthy van, drove out of the valley, and visited a little place that served “plate lunch” – usually two scoops of white rice, barbeque kalua pig, and kim chee, all in a Styrofoam shell.  One day I was so excited about going to lunch, I slipped in the mud and slid down our hilly site on my backside.  I never managed to live that one down.  My green t-shirt remained forever stained by red dirt.

After two weeks of backfilling, I was finally given my own area to dig a test pit.  The more experienced members helped me map the spot and take photographs.  Using trowels and brushes, buckets and a screen for sifting dirt, I slowly began to excavate my piece of earth.

The most exciting days in the valley were whenever anyone discovered anything of real significance - something other than small chunks of charcoal from the wood burned in Native Hawaiian cooking fires.  While clearing brush with our machetes, we sometimes found irrigation trenches or walls built of stacked lava rocks.  Cutting through the tough hau branches was impossible for me using the machete.  With my terrible hand-eye coordination, I couldn’t strike the same spot twice.  I feigned sickness on those days.

On my very own “day of fame,” I uncovered a large, somewhat flat, polished stone with a straight edge – an adze, a Native Hawaiian axe that had once been attached to a wooden handle by fibrous cord.  Everyone stopped work to examine the adze and discuss it amid an air of excitement.  We turned up the radio and had a little party.  If we’d had any beer, we would’ve broken it out for sure.

During the course of the summer, as we finished digging in a certain area, our crew would be assigned to a new location.  This was an interesting time because work was suspended while we waited for the director to come from the museum and tell us where he wanted us to dig next based on the discoveries we were making.  We filled the time, sometimes entire days, as best we could.

On one such day, I was assigned to reorganize the tools in our base area where we took our breaks.  There was a large blue tarp on the ground under the tools and an identical tarp strung on poles overhead as protection from the rain.  No one else was nearby.  As I worked, I suddenly felt something fall on my neck with a tickling sensation.  I instinctively grabbed at my neck and ended up gripping a huge, blue and black centipede - which I promptly flung yards away onto the road.  I didn’t even scream.  My crewmates thought I was telling tales with that one.

Another time, we sat under the tarp, chatting, eating snacks, and waiting for the director to arrive.  We heard a rustling in the trees.  A mongoose.  These animals were brought to Hawaii to eat the rats that arrived on ships.  In addition to the rats, they ate the eggs of rare Hawaiian flightless birds, forcing them into extinction.  We discussed the mongoose; I mentioned something about watching a group of mongooses earlier that day.  Everyone became very quiet.  I looked around at my co-workers and asked, “Is the plural of mongoose, ‘mongeese’?”  Everyone burst into laughter.  I laughed, too.  Someone said, “Everyone eventually asks that question out here.”

One of the guys on our crew told us he’d done a lot of hiking in Halawa Valley and he knew the location of a plane crash.  He also knew of a small cave containing human bones.  We decided we should spend our next free day hiking to those sites.

On the day of the hike, we drove the van to the best strategic point to begin working our way toward the cave.  We stood in the road looking up at the mountains as our guide pointed to the spot where he believed the cave to be.  He wasn’t entirely sure.  I didn’t care; I was stunned by the beauty of the landscape on this sunny day.  Since we’d had some rain, several waterfalls cascaded their way down the ridge.  The air smelled fresh and just a bit humid – invigorating.

We began picking our way through the vegetation, inventing our own switchbacks as we climbed the slope.  There were no paths to follow.  No GPS.  We stopped periodically to get our bearings before moving on in what we hoped was the right direction.  We talked about what it might be like to see human bones.  Whose bones could they be?  We thought they might belong to some member of the Hawaiian royal family.  It had been a common practice to hide the remains of royalty to protect them from desecration.

Two hours later, we found ourselves gazing up the sheer face of the yellow, rocky cliff.  Our guide pointed to an opening in the wall, about twenty feet above us.  The cave.  We stood there in silence, recollecting ourselves in preparation for whatever we were about to observe.

The only way to reach the cave was by climbing a series of boulders and rocky outcroppings in the cliff.  There was barely enough space for one person to go up at a time.  I decided to go last.  I was not at all confident that I’d be able to make the climb due to my fear of heights.  I wanted to take my time.

We stood around patiently awaiting our turn to look inside the cave.  The mood was respectfully silent.  However, we couldn’t contain our curiosity about whether there were any visible bones.  The cave was too small to enter, and even if we could’ve entered, we would not have wanted to violate this sacred place.  A young woman quietly asked one of our returning members if he’d seen any bones.  He said yes, there were a few visible bones, a femur in particular.

When my turn came, I inched my way toward the cave, stopping to breathe and calm myself after placing my foot each time.  At the entrance, I experienced the most profound peace.  Everything was silent, yet somehow alive.  The opening was only three feet wide and about three feet high at its peak.  I looked into the cave and saw that it was roughly seven feet deep.  Inside, everything was the same yellow color.  Very dry.  At first, I saw only rocks.  As I looked more carefully, I noticed the end and shaft of a femur and pieces of a broken cranium.

Time seemed to stop.  My mind even stopped.  I stared in awe at the bones.  Then I heard a slow dripping sound, and gradually, I became aware of water falling on my face and hands.  Tears?  Whose tears?  There was no sadness here.  I realized the water was dripping down the face of the cliff and falling in front of the cave.  This filled me with overwhelming peace and joy.  I turned my gaze away from the bones and looked up at the blue sky, then down at the lush vegetation all around me.  My fear of heights had vanished.  I had no idea how long I’d been up there, but I wanted to stay.

Realizing I needed to rejoin my group, I walked down the cliff.  Everyone remained subdued.  We decided to head for the site of the plane crash which our guide believed was nearby.  The terrain was uneven and slippery in spots.  As I walked, I repeatedly grasped small tree trunks to keep my balance.  Our guide informed us the airplane was a Japanese Zero fighter that crashed during the attack on Pearl Harbor.  After hiking through thick undergrowth for an hour, a few of us were convinced we were going in circles.

A voice called out, “There it is!”  I looked but didn’t see anything other than more vegetation.  A large fallen tree, covered with layers of moss, blocked our way.  One by one we clambered over the tree.  Then we found ourselves face to face with the wreckage of the plane - all covered with dirt and rust, and overgrown with vines.  We examined pieces of the fuselage and wings, and found snippets of Japanese writing.  We didn’t see human remains, but nevertheless, we remained mindful that someone had died there.   I was amazed to see the debris being overcome by the vibrant plant-life.

Among my co-workers, I sensed respect and a shared humanity that included the spirit of the dead fighter pilot.  What must it have been like to die a violent death far away from loved ones?  This wasn’t a morbid thought.  I didn’t care if this pilot were a friend or a foe.  He was a human being – that’s all that mattered to me.  I didn’t feel sad or frightened.  I simply experienced in the depths of my soul that death is part of life.

We sat on boulders and tree stumps for I don’t know how long - contemplating the scene.  I was surprised that certain members of my crew could be so quiet.

Heading back down to the road, we happened upon a clearing.  There, in front of the ridge on the opposite side of the valley, appeared a bright double rainbow.  Both bows were strong and complete from one end to the other.  My heart gave thanks for the rainbows and for all the sacred experiences in the valley.

We found the van and flung our tired, sweaty, dirty bodies onto the vinyl seats.  Our guide for the day remarked that it was five o’clock, time to “pau hana” – quit work, go home.  I smiled, thinking Indiana Jones had been redeemed on this day.  I’d even forgotten all about lunch break.

The Bookseller

by Ali Znaidi

Every day in the same place
in the same pavement
under the same eucalyptus tree
the bookseller sells books in his stall.
When he bends among the piles of books
his face radiates with glee.
Piles of used books enfolded in dust,
piles of new books that smell
intoxicating ink,
piles of silent words,
piles of slumbering ideas
waiting for lovers
under the urge of intense lust.
Fragrant ink, writers’ blood and sweat
mingle in his stall,
mature enough for a harvest of diverse ideas.
Though tired, the bookseller’s face still
radiates with glee.
He seems like a fluttering butterfly
spreading specks of pollen
& pollinating hungry souls and spirits.
The bookseller never misses a day.
He is so brave and courageous
to continue selling books in this age
of high-tech.
Every day in the same place
hope blooms like a smile
on a sad face.
This world is still beautiful
& books will never perish,
despite the tyranny of hyperlinks
because the bookseller’s hands
still smell ink.

Moments

by Subhankar Das

Sometimes her eyes are so flat
that I doubt whether she is
really with me.

I only hope when we kissed
I was there in that kiss at least.

The stars, the tomorrows, the smiles, the street lights
keeps on glowing
as I walk past them,
those moments of light
or darkness.

Our A.D.

by Carmen Eichman

We pick out gravel,
past pieces of guilt that grate
against our bare feet.

As if ordered to woodsheds,
our Moses’ deserts,
by vituperous verdicts handed down
miles apart, we were targeted for our kind fair,
entrailed in hand-made, man-made,
manic messes until
our recent redemptions reigned.
Our bowed heads
no longer clustered with disasters’ tattered, dusty wings.

Sunlight divine slings lovers,
you and I, around sliver moons made for two.
Yet lingering clouds trail our fragile wisdom,
sift our sensual flesh restored,
through starlit moments that mark
our A.D., its blessed beginnings

of this, our tilled, stilled, quiet
of belief.  Our soft shadows shimmer
into autumn’s warm, coffee-kissed mornings,
our limbs moored to present time,
perfectly pinned upon fragrant sheets,
tacked against our dawn’s whiteboard of hope.

A Solva Sunset Two history graduates have come to a Pembrokeshire smallholding

by Robert Nisbet

 

It really felt as if we were a Western-wagon couple,

bundling into some new dimension of land and meaning.

Now, like a clumsy nineteenth century cart wheel,

we’ve lurched into the territory’s ditch.

You’ll leave for a while, to teach history again,

in the English Midlands, wait on resurgent times.

I’ll keep this place going, for sure,

feed the chickens, chop sticks, bundle them …

Keep the home fires burning,

that song must be seventy years ago now …

tend the crops, the shop, the children.

 

Tonight’s curious iridescent sunset,

out on the cliffs beyond Solva,

is not so much a failing of the light

as a washing down, a making spruce.

History of the West

by Emily Strauss

Suddenly silence descends like
a curtain dropping, freeways
disappear, voices fall into empty
space, eyes no longer see, ears
stop hearing, blood pumping
within your head is the only

sound, your arms are numb, feet
refuse to step, hot sun bakes
as you lie under waves of thick
air, the leaves motionless, dirt
cracked into sixes, the grains
ready to dis-integrate.

Time prevails, bones turn
white, brittle, crushed
by the quick step of a coyote
half a century later
freeways now gone, the river
channel deeper, boulders
tumbled, new cliff rock
gashed open and pale

grave stones fallen, it's hard
to see any letters, maybe a 9
shapes barely cut into granite
bleached after a hundred
summers, the shapeless body
unknown, only the wind
touches that sacred ground
only the wind singing chants
for the dead, with time ebbing.

Cars become rusted mounds
bright orange poppies shine
on brown iron and steel, prints
of mice show new life but quietly
still no birds disturb the scene.

Now the pavement cracks widen
into small chasms gaping dry
under the cloudless blue bowl
silence fills the view
like water pouring in.

Haversack Beer

by John Pursch

Electrical creatures impend a pond to freeze-dry exacting turbines, whistling interior lifeline peels to trusted tachycardia musk. Etched homunculi peer from tour flame croutons, leaching pure-bred cordoned soup cetaceans from rockslide pentameter, shipping mornings to fiddlehead farms for philandering phonies, wringing oar hands to sounding portions of underwater heat. Lathered encumbrances browse recursive memories of mint, owning hopscotch quadrant orchestras, braised in cattle silence. Dung marrow flipper cats coddle hammered traceries of cocked ham, jumping the usual urgencies with scarcely slack bubble wands, dimming stomach runes to groves of pylon ease. Seventy swooning pitchers mug for encapsulation berths, flopping ship-to-sherpa laundry courts in dialing troves, emptied of actuarial speed. It trembles over rice competitors, mulling undertakers with randy storms’ loose tundra, hitching ‘roids to basilicas coned to class wharf heirlooms, crowned with insecticide.

Hurling starter pestles into warm recovery garb, enclosure keys smooth original ochre teens, inching through rolling paste vats. Amity fits suppression shorts to teetering parameters, erring under sidling captions, hoisting woven aural phlegm in steins of placid shells. The oceanic aims of elms implore a wayward bennie queen, synchronized with petticoats aloft in stylish reindeer pants, pausing to regard a half-turn aerial with disembodied sunshine. Levered hoes encourage wizened grooves to canter, chambering a wound’s Palmolive back brace, stinted and demure, where argyle antics dole out dilatory pods of crank, living twice for weathered runes. Grateful yearlings press an herbal servant’s dross to newfound bus compartment jewels, skittish and returned to pander, grazing west of apple cake corridors, below the blue horizon. Tasked to egg on nomad frieze semantics, gyro leisure cones to pylon silica in fortnight tooth colonics, simulating cud retraction’s cooly rendered mist. Storks repel to cleft opinions, fur bereaved by glossy spangles, grossing quite the corner’s fumigated orchid trike, left to charnel cough crops. Spewing bath resurgence felt, anarchic fissile table wards cement a Flemish raster can, skedaddling hyperactive lemons, trout in tow to tartar hooky haversack beer.

Transition

by A.J. Huffman

girl. I am what I never wanted
to become:  unintended.  I hang,
faceless, against your wall.
“Touch when needed!”
The neon label screams
against my skin.  As an afterthought,
you smile and kiss my forehead.
I guess I was a good little girl.  Nursing
your ego at my breast.  Too bad
[for me] you bit through my heart.
Oops.  My bad (not yours).  I should
have kept a closer eye on your lips.
Speaking softly in ulterior tongues,
they remain [allusive].  Loaned out
(at random?) to the bevvy of beauties
your re-formed smile lures.  Dial 911!
For depth, Death, or me.  I listen
for the ring.  My fingers frozen in the pose
of [guaranteed(?)] response.

the darkness in us all

by J.J. Campbell

death never
looked as
lovely as
you

these lonely
nights bring
out the
darkness
in us all

as the full
moon cracks
open another
dawn

the taste of
blood brings
the fever pitch
of battle to
the lips of
wounded
souls

if there ever
was a good
time for a
reckoning

we have
found it

In the Beach Café, 1962

by Robert Nisbet
 

Exactly fifty years ago, this showery

August, we sat in a Broad Haven beach café

as rain rolled solemnly down the windows.

Those two boys, sickle-keen, their futures

carved in hope, into influence and mighty

good. The girl, long raven-haired,

our archetype, she played guitar for us,

smiling down vistas of love and socialism.

I’ve seen none of them again, in half a

century. I’ve seen no revolutions, carousels

of love and brotherhood. I simply hope

those boys never sold trash for easy greed,

polluted neither minds nor beaches,

that they’ll have taught, administered,

constructed decencies. And she, maybe

she worked on good and generous things,

maybe wrote songs. Maybe her children too

reached eighteen years of age
with hope and earnestness unhurt.

Between Beats

by Grace Raji

 
I’ve begun to feel,

To hear the rest,

The echo between notes faint growing;

Like the pause in your heart,

Between beats in the chest,

The empty river is forever flowing.

 
Graze over old wounds,

Hard and healed fast,

The futile razorblade is thine.

For only the moment,

Do the sharp pains last,

But the numbness lingers a lifetime…

 
Dare me to bleed

And cry frozen tears,

To no avail grasp the hollow abyss.

You are your shadow,

That to the blind eye appears,

The presence I can’t sense or miss.

Smokedate

by Omar Azam

The mirror holds
5 lamps,

but I can see
no reflection,

only the smell
of
sick
aged
tobacco
smoke.

*

1:15.
I wait,
writing, bored
brooding for the nightclub
to close.

The crowd
hasn't come,
it's only gotten quieter,
the music has stopped.

The crowd
never came,
only the music remained,
the sound of a party
with no human company.

*

O! To suck, to hold
between the lips
rolled paper and a light
creating rings and patterns
of hazy blue.

To take deep
the burning,
slow burning of your soul.

To take the life
of a rod
one breath at a time,

as it tolerates
sits idly by,
in fact helps

and takes
your life
in turn.

As the red
turns orange
turns brown

as the wafer
watches itself
fade to black

the smell of
burnt flesh replaces
sweet living blue.

the whole ball of wax

by Larry Jones

call me a racist
call me a homophobe
call me a misogynist
call me a republican
call me a redneck
say what you will
about an old
white
straight
conservative
american
male
i prefer
you call me
god.

Ben’s Rock

by A.J. Huffman

Silhouetted against a sea’s st[r]ained dawn,
this devil dares his signature stand.  In attempt
to deter this diminutive cliff
‘s calling to the sun?  Beveled
arms upend.  [A would-be conqueror]  You are
a modern-day Icarus.  You desire to fly
in reverse.  The wind holds
its breath, your form:
stable.
Only your shadow falls . . .

This is how energy is made.

Elegy for James Eagan Holmes

by Jordan Jamison

 

Look at you, Television Monkey, with your Vicodin jive and orange hair, shocking as Bukowski is shocking-violence is cool, fast, and mildly tragic;
Less than two weeks of fame-one day for each soul-they are calling you Bozo in the bars as they eat their peanuts and pretzels.
Downstairs, my dad has been watching TV for hours, every few minutes slurring words of misguided hate, "JUST KILL THA FUCKER AWREADY!"
Don't mind him; another member of the Middle American lynch mob. He's drunk.
Aurora was always in you, lurking; Freud’s greasy cocaine fingers would have a field day poking around there, stroking fragments of gray matter, Id, Ego, Super-ego; how many psychologists sofas have you sat on in the past year, trembling like a trapped animal, sure your plans would be discovered by the probe?
Forget it. You don’t have to answer that.

We’re from the same neighborhood of San Diego-Torrey Highlands-you graduated from my brother’s rival school, you lived down the street from me.
Do you remember that little taco shop called Rodrigo’s near the 7-Eleven, the place that never gave credit and the dusty old TV played Telemundo all day?
Did you eat there, did your mother ever pick up carne asada and burritos and chips there on Fridays for you, and would you smile? Do you smile? Have you ever smiled?
Forget it. You don’t have to answer that.

Last Resort

by Bradford Middleton

Brighton was the last resort after London city

And now I’m trapped in this town of ill-repute
In the hotel of Last Resort

A place where the partying neighbours, random drunks

And the incessant wailing of the fire alarm do their best
To ensure the impossibility of a good night’s sleep

This is driving me inextricably to the madhouse yet

I don’t understand why I love it so much and it feels like home
More than any other place I’ve lived alone

A place I can watch the dust blow forward and the dust

Blow back a place I call home throughout which
We end up getting savagely attacked by the wind

Such a savage storm would have some proclaiming

I wander lonely as a cloud but all I can say is
Like fuck I do all I want is to be at home

ExtinguisherAfter Giuseppe Sanmartino's “Veiled Christ”

by M.N. O'Brien

The girl was out of breath,
covered by a marble veil.

The teary eyes of a vacuum yawn
forgave her with an eternal answer

that waits to this day to be fulfilled,
so tomorrow can be as the day after and we can relax

in the freedom of death, deflated.
All of this made to extinguish a fire

that we asked to be apologized for
after we became tired of the burn.

happiness for someone else

by J.J. Campbell

empty

you feel it every day

that gnawing feeling
eating your soul

sad truths beating
you at the end of
every night

you close your eyes
and know no woman
has ever told you
i love you and
meant it

the better half of
your life is gone

fleeting memories
of happiness for
someone else

father time chooses
to never relent or
cut you any slack

and as you search
for the key to the
gun closet

you scramble to
remember the lessons
you learned as a child
about making a choice
and living with the
consequences

one long last drink

you were always
good at accepting
fate

Internet beatniks

by Santosh Kalwar

Don’t stare.
       World’s is ending.
Don’t shout.
       Everybody is screaming.
Don’t scream
       Everybody is listening.
Don’t listen.
       Everybody is writing.

All the stuff are keeping us in vain
Suffocation and beautiful pain

They are saying,
Fifteen minutes of:
       Name and fame

Except these
       Random beatniks,

       That are running
All over and over
Time, and again

Angels’ Wings

by Chris Butler

Angels
in three piece
suits,

don’t need
to spread their
wings

to fly
into the
sky,

away
from the peace
of clouds

paved with concrete,

as the
rest of us
are left

with skyscrapers’ skeletal remains.

In Dreams I Do Not Sleep

by Steven Clifford

“Ticks” and “Tocks” gently stream against black nothingness.
Fluxing shades evolve with ever complexity. 
Faces
deform into
bazar figures.
(Tick
tock)
“Nothing is there,” he assures me, his arms around me.
(Tick
 tock)

“Jimmy!”
The opaque window shudders as a truck rumbles through conception.
(Tick tock) Mutters speak over whispers beneath silent screams (Tick
tocks) and his silhouette holds me (Tick tocks)
like a gypsy told me at a sculpting site (Tick tocks)
still in development. (Tick tocks)

Walls swell nearer, (Tick tocks)
the boundaries warp, lucidness melts, (Tick tocks) and
elusions gel with the shadowy room. (Tick tocks)

Psyche hive (Tick tocks) a swarming hiss
that (Tick tocks) recoils at my touch. (Tick tocks)
I have (Tick tocks) delved too deep, organically.

Is the father clock just faulty? (Tick tocks)

I remember darkness (Tick tocks)
is just like (Tick

tocks) shutting my (t.i.c.k..s…) eyes.
[(                   ) I think anyway…]

Newark

by M.N. O'Brien

I know about scarcity, I know
the dreamy truths that fact cannot pervade
on both wings. Man is left to fly and think.
The television is American
and eccentric. I must be on my guard.

Standing on the fringe of contradiction,
a quiet life bellows at a funeral. The weather never says
a thing. It says hello and asks about your condition without
caring, expecting good and nothing more.

The crumbs of concrete
lie on the side of the road, lost in thought,
resisting the automatic life. Shopping carts, faded signs,
hotels, shadows, and the hot car seat
presses back into yourself.

I was in Newark long enough
to know the color dark blue and the comparison
of white light and yellow light, and the rumors
that white light can only be felt. I have heard
more serious charges in my lifetime of watching.

I was in Newark long enough
to know clouds behind a neon light,
funeral homes, police cars, trains,
discount fires, and believe
little boys still love
spikes and explosions.

I was in Newark long enough
to know the planes fly low, shaking
all the buildings down and throwing
the garbage in the air like a child celebration,
to know how the people walk dry mouthed
and await the opening of fire hydrants.

Political Scholars

by Taufiq bin Abdul Khalid

Political party of scholars
Who cry out for the Islamic State,
Are in truth, crying out for power,
Since they consider themselves
Most worthy to speak
On behalf of God.

That, dear sirs,
Entitles me to treat you
Like any other dodgy vote-grubbing
Baby-kissing politician,
And question you,
And critique you.

However sacred you think
The ballot box maybe…

Smouldering

by Anthony Ward

She used to be smoking
Smouldering upon the screen
Her image burnt into my thoughts
Scorched upon my memories

Her bespoke beauty
Tailored to my tastes
In perpetual defiance of age
The brightness of her countenance
Shining down at me in lunar splendour

Dazzling my vision from the fissures
That would come to resemble bark
In later years
Stubbed out on my mind.

The House by the City Auditorium

by Douglas Polk

stain glass windows,
in the front door,
ornate and beautiful,
the scroll work on the gables,
but the floorboards of the porch,
rotted and broken,
vacant and abandoned,
the house stands alone,
the old lady finally died,
when I still a boy,
the house,
once a home,
now a place,
for ghost stories,
and teenage boys,
smoking and drinking,
wonder if the old lady knows,
in her grave so cold,
her heart aching,
the wind weeping in the dark night,
outside my bedroom window.

Before the FrostFor James D. Quinton

by g emil reutter

I work the back garden, drag bags of mulch to the edge
to prepare for the coming winter. Hydrangea leaves are
yellowing, wilted heads of Black- Eyed Susans hang from
limp stems. I work around Azaleas, Rhododendrons
building small mounds around their base. The sky is gray
clouds turning dark, thunder booms from the distance. I
continue to work toward the annuals. Begonias, Impatiens
already ceding to the weathers’ changes, await the last
deadly frost. I think of covering them over, but prop them
up in the dark wet bark.

We will never have that promised beer or read a poem

in the stale air of a tap room. I will not read that new poem
or story, the ones you left on the tip of a pen. You ceded
yourself before the frost, leaving words full of life, love and
loneliness that like perennials live for another season. Though
I never met you; I knew you from our common bound of
words flowing back and forth across the Atlantic. I work the
garden the way I work a poem, adjusting, crafting it just right.
I think of words, of your words as sadness lingers about me.
I finish the garden as the sky opens, whimpers sheds tears
until the hard early autumn rain drenches me so that no one
can see I am crying with the rain.

Seek

by Steven Clifford

Waves manipulate him, and he submerges hard,  
foam encapsulating him, trying…

…“to find
the one true creation,” a distant radio announces.  
And fuzzy interference projects over raspy voices. 
“They say it can’t be found.” “No one knows what it is.”  “It will answer all secrets.” 
"Its out there”…

…somewhere, in the ocean: blues, reds and purples
blur and blend, and every spec flickers so.

He inhales oxygen with no gills.

Tremulous waters pulls him to high skies. Winds quake molecules berserkly.   
His face winces, and his squinting eyes withhold a

faded gold dessert of dunes of various heights of

millions of rough lines,
the vanishing points eased. Loose sand blows through the wide reaches of a
nonexistent horizon. By a change of heart,
he unearths the ocean bottom.
His hand ascends, guck in balm which he digs through.

He discovers a string of seaweed curved like a smile
and an off-centered stone.

White ceiling.

Girls Night Out

by Rebecca Miller

Why we dance like empty headed souls
at bars filled with drunkards.
Our self worth heightened by their lack of humanity.
Screaming at low paid musicians,
and foul-looking single men who paid five dollars at the door
for a night filled of free hard-ons.
It's only fair;
if we taunt them in glitter, cleavage and saucy perfume.
We are women that spoken for,
but whiskey evokes primal rages that diamonds could stop.
Dim lights hide imperfections,
that are hard to look past
when your personailty is being projectile vomited
from every movement made on that putrid floor.
Pushing the limits,
acting single and we know our night is done.

LISTENING

by Alan S. Kleiman

Nobody looks at my body
Nobody sees my face
Nothing about me is apparent
I am hidden
Not by myself
But by my observers
Who see through me
Like glass, like water
Transparent and empty
Missing the moisturizing
Nourishment
That comes like rain
Making the grass grow
Even at night

Lolita and Bonnie

by Kait McIntyre

When the gold gets in
your eyes, hearing
wedding bands crack
that left third
knuckle swallowing
in grey linen
pocket dark,

Brush and swivel
your ankle over his
argyle. Leather
covered Benjamins whispering
like moss under your fingertips.

With tape binding
my chest and plastic
protruding from my crotch, I am
the prodigal son. In a cocktail dress,
I am the way-
ward daughter.

But rolling in
my father’s cash in your bed
I am nothing
but human and fevered
from your touch.

Apples

by Donal Mahoney

One thing
we all have
in common is
we're ripening
for the harvest.

Donald Trump
and Pee-wee Herman,
Bill Gates
and Eliot Spitzer,
Warren Buffett
and Anthony Weiner

are different
in many respects
but like the rest of us,
they, too, are ripening
for the harvest.

They hang with us
from the same branch,
apples, big and small,
ripening in summer,
withering in fall,
waiting for winter
to conduct its harvest.

Some of us hang
from that branch
and wonder
what in the name
of God is next.
Others just hang.
They appear
not to care.

Woodshed

by Richard Hartwell

Mossy wooden shingles on a peaked roof,
naked and exposed on the underside with
no ceiling, concrete slab for a floor, probably
poured in the late forties or early fifties,
about the same time as the eight car garage.

Chipped, weathered forest green exterior,
long, narrow, and the moodily dark interior.

This woodshed, east of the upscale house,
home of black widows and tarantulas; a
place of creation and repairs, seduction,
molestation of memories, and misery; a
place of reconsideration of nightmares.

            *     *     *
She used to tame the tarantulas,
teaching them to climb her arms,
to transfer hand over hand,
fascinating me, transfixed
by her dexterity and calm.

Once she also sawed and carved,
then whittled a toy sailboat for me,
with brass eye connections for
mast and boom, shrouds and stays,
all manner of tackle, and cloth sails.

Those were the days of creation,
days of a joyous youth spent there.

The days of seduction, molestation, and
misery, were days when only she was
there to receive what she could not
combat, too young to refuse or refute
a frequenter to the shed for discipline.

The cliché of a spanking in a woodshed
was all too real for her, but carried too
far by a father, her adoptive father, who
went from slaps behind to caresses before;
who went from correction to her despair.

She never spoke of this sin against her,
she did not need to, for her clothes and
glum demeanor disavowed summer; I,
though much younger than she, could see
beyond dead tarantulas and broken spars.

Tortured toys, stabbed spiders, and reconsideration of nightmares,
ended by open beams, her avenue of escape from hurt and shame.