A.J. Kaufmann - One Poem

August 5, 2014, 5:51 pm

Naked Bar-Do

Sitting in the sand, wrapped in
wind unwinding
brain branches pine brainy
beach crazy

who would like a wife
in addition to singing moles
who wouldn't want to hide from the world
in coastal trees
& acid laced 7up

sitting in auroras entangled
before the morning light
sitting clothed in airiness
over the fresh bonfires glow

where are the Slavic girls
fun Sunday nudists
whom even anarchists chase away from the beach

hear the sirens already, war
article of clothing commando
-disappears- the corpse from the beach
there, in the naked Bar-Do.

A.J. Kaufmann is from Poznan, Poland. His work has previously appeared in ditch, Carcinogenic Poetry, Clockwise Cat, Red Ceilings and many other, mostly on-line, journals. He's the author of "Siva in Rags" (Kendra Steiner Editions, 2008), "Broke Nuptial Minds" (Virgogray Press, 2009) and other poetry chapbooks.

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Scott Vanya - One Poem

August 6, 2014, 2:37 pm

≫ Next: Trish Saunders - Two Poems

≪ Previous: A.J. Kaufmann - One Poem

As Calliope and I Crawl into Bed Together

As Calliope and I crawl in to bed together,
      it is with reckless
      abandon
      I write this.

Only 20 minutes to birth
      this bun in the oven,
      and she will wait
      not much
longer.

And I know, she has had
      many other
      lovers
      besides me,
      as I have had
      others
as well as her.

Yet, none of them,
      Kali (see "Oblivion"),
      Death (see "Despair"),
      and the many things
I have imbibed and ingested;

Yet,
as she and I crawl off to bed,
      so do you
      sleep with love
      and joy
      just waiting to be born,
      to be hatched
from out of your flesh.

And it will not be long,
      'fore she and I
      cast aside
      all the sheets
      and really
      get down to it.

The love-making art,
      where the rhythms
      and pulse,
      pound and earth
come rising out of us
      we entwine all
      of our-
      selves together.

"Sleep now," she says.
"You have done well," she says,
       "to honor me.
       and for you
I will do the same."

And even
if there be
no followers
it is she who
sits beside me as I write.

We giggle a bit,
and forget our loneliness,
for soon we are
to crawl off
to bed together.

And 'fore
she and I do
"Make The Wild Stuff"
I leave you
with these
few words
to perhaps
coax a smile from your face:

In all the world
and uni-, multi-, or omni-
verse,
there is only 1,
only 1 you.
And if you are to hear
what inside you
wants to be heard,
you must sing at the top of you lungs:

"I am only beginning now to understand,
I can not die,
and all The World
is
my joy."

Scott Vanya is an Austin, TX area poet. He has been writing for a long time and favors sharing his work at open mics where he performs extemporaneously and plays guitar. His work has appeared in Walt’s Corner, Manna, Perigee, Chicago Literary Review, Mobius, Cosmic Trend, Pitchfork, Romantics Quarterly, Artisan, Pegasus, The Neovictorian, and The Blind Man's Rainbow. He is author of poetry collections, Free for an Unlimited Time, Conduit's of the Sublime, and CarryAway Seeds. He operates Open Mics Austin, a blogsite that archives various Austin area open mics and performances.

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Trish Saunders - Two Poems

August 7, 2014, 9:30 am

≫ Next: P.W. Covington - Three Poems

≪ Previous: Scott Vanya - One Poem

Belief Systems

At 13, a terrifying and holy age,

I believed life offers tentacles for greatness

to everyone.

It doesn't.

I am older now than Bobby Kennedy, Gilda Radner,

Martin Luther King, John Lennon.

All my poor dead heroes--

why did I picture you as lanterns in the sky?

You are the blackness behind the stars.

Catalog of Obsolete Lonely Sounds

First, the old-fashioned dial tone,

zenith of nothingness.

Who invented that?

the not-quite silent radio

after Country K.A.R.L's

sign-off prayer.

blues singer fading to needle hiss

as the victrola winds down

in an empty room.

at the tone the time will be

three a.m.

exactly.

Trish Saunders worked as a journalist, technical editor, and caregiver for her parents before she began writing poems. She lives in Honolulu, Hawaii.

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P.W. Covington - Three Poems

August 8, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Grant Tabard - Two Poems

≪ Previous: Trish Saunders - Two Poems

Family Housing

I was born near the end of the runways

On a Cold War, California

Desert Air Force Base

Phantom jets and F-105's

Thundered overhead, and I slept as a baby

Secure in my bed

Clean, small, communities with familiar paces

Retreat played every afternoon

We stood up for our flag

We'd ride our BX bikes anywhere,

Pretending they were sleek, fighter planes

In family housing

New schools, every two or three years

That clean, small town was movable,

Interchangeable

Safe

“Brat” was an endearing term

We wore it with pride, like uniforms, like decoration

Still, today, sometimes

Life seems to make more sense

The other side of the “100% ID check,

Deadly Force Authorized” signs

Where we all drive slow, in four door cars,

And pickup trucks

Through

Family housing

Where everything still stops

For those bugles at the end of the duty day

Where jet noise or turbo prop drone

Does not scream “War” to me,

But whispers of home.

Water, BloodThe border is not chain link and wire

Not concrete, steel, or guns

It is the water that flows from snow melt

And that nurtures sandia vines in the fields

It is blood of the Earth

Sangre de gente

Spilled blood, life blood,

Family and Faith

The border is not history

It is hope

It is not yesterday
It is today

Never Work with Food

(Field Workers in California)

It is still about field workers in California

But, it's also about fast food employees in Texas

And packing plant laborers in Kansas

Dogs, treated with more dignity

Than those that manufacture

Supermarket brand pet foods

It isn't always about food

Not always

But, food is a damned good place to start

Thinking about the 21st century

Wage Slave

How many families did you keep in poverty

Shopping at the grocery store today?

(or)

How many shitty jobs did you take away

In tiny, speed-trap towns

With your sheltered insistence on

Organic

Gluten Free

Non Hormone

This or Gentrified That

From a clean, well lighted, place?

The Red in Red State Union busting

Is the blood leaking onto our dinner platter

The Fire sauce at Taco Bell,

It polishes the floors at

The Whole Foods corporate office in Texas

In dirty slaughter house jeans or

Pressed Wall-Mart Street suits,

The stench is the same

It is still about field workers in California

Suffering and inequality are the diet of this nation

Hate and fear, served for 99 cents in a paper wrapper

White, male, privilege on the table every Sunday

After church

Where, we are taught to be prosperous;

That, to be successful means

To never work with food.

PW Covington has been a fixture in the Texas Spoken word and Indie Lit scene for almost 20 years. His work has appeared in regional, national, and international journals, and he has published two collections of poetry. Covington recently released his first novel, titled "Dear Elsa,." PW lives in rural Lavaca County with his bulldog and tends family ranch land outside Cuero, Texas.

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Grant Tabard - Two Poems

August 11, 2014, 7:55 am

≫ Next: Joseph Saling - One Poem

≪ Previous: P.W. Covington - Three Poems

Primrose Hill, at Dawn

The city appears out of the fold,
like a great ghost leering over the horizon
seeking imperfection in the cut of the sky.

Purloined cloud vestments caress the tips
of the grazing dawn, strange marriage vows
encased in the blushing cheek of the sun.

A paradox of vision that scares the viewer,
the subconscious sighs,
a systemic fear of beauty, it'll swallow you in heartache.

A Bridge Over Moving Cars

Weightlessness ringing
a freedom ethereal,
a space suspended

hitched on the back of
electric piano notes
burnt from shadows that

linger under a
fortress of zephyr blankets,
an illustrated

manuscript of fog.
Harmony in the roar, a
montage of columns.

I am smoke beyond
the clouds, I am the Lord's breath
above moving cars.

Grant Tarbard has worked as a computer games journalist, a contributor
to football fanzines, an editor, a reviewer and an interviewer. He is now the
editor of The Screech Owl.

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Joseph Saling - One Poem

August 27, 2014, 8:39 am

≫ Next: Caitlan Johnson - One Poem

≪ Previous: Grant Tabard - Two Poems

When I Sleep I Dream

When I sleep I dream, even though
I can’t close my eyes. But in my head,
I go away. Sitting at a piano
on stage, I'm illumined
by a single spot,
and I can’t see beyond
it's cone of light. I know
the theater's full. I can hear
the whispers and coughs
and the hush settling over all.

I raise my hands toward the keyboard.
They don't reach. I feel myself
move backward, rising from the stage,
but the music plays anyway.
Debussy.

I move farther away and then
I’m aware again of everything –
the nurses, the janitor taking the trash,
those three at the foot of the bed
who never stop staring.
Those three I can't tell about the dream.
They don’t know I dream because
my eyes don’t close and they can’t see
me go away. And they don’t know
when I come back or that I never left.

They talk to me. I see their lips move.
I feel them touch me but I can’t tell them.
I need their touch. It's the only way
I bridge the gulf between
their world and me. But I can’t
tell them, and they can't hear.
And then I dream again.

There is another way to make it stop.
I won’t know when it happens.
I imagine it will be much the same
As the dream. Perhaps it is the dream
but instead of keys, I’ll reach for their faces
and never touch them. Just float backwards
listening to Debussy, rising up.

Joseph Saling's first book of poems A Matter of Mind is available from Foothills Publishing. His poetry and stories have appeared widely in such journals as The Raintown Review, The Formalist, Poet Lore, Ohio Journal, The Bacon Review, Nothing No One Nowhere,and Carcinogenic Poetry. He lives in Metro Atlanta with his wife Sandy and their dog Yeats where to pass the time between poems, he writes stories, paints with acrylics, works on a novel, and makes a living as a freelance health writer and editor.

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Caitlan Johnson - One Poem

August 28, 2014, 6:54 am

≫ Next: Abigail Wyatt - Two Poems

≪ Previous: Joseph Saling - One Poem

Hephaestus

I.

This is a weapon.

It was not forged in the fire-pits,
left to rot by Hades,
but instead originated here in my
clouds--the small domain I rule
without much interference.

II.

This is not my weapon.

It was built for Zeus.
What would he do if someone
absconded with his lightning?
I would suffer. We all
would fall, stricken.

Caitlin Johnson holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Her work has appeared in Boston Poetry Magazine, Clare Literary Journal, Eternal Haunted Summer, Fortunates, Momoware, Pembroke Magazine, Vagina: The Zine, and What the Fiction, among other outlets, and is forthcoming in Baseline Literary Arts Journal and Stoneboat Literary Journal

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Abigail Wyatt - Two Poems

August 29, 2014, 9:00 am

≫ Next: Stefanie Bennett - Two Poems

≪ Previous: Caitlan Johnson - One Poem

Our String Bean Girls

We have forgotten the ways of slow growth
and the harvest that derives from careful husbandry:
how the wintering earth shrinks and hardens,
protecting the new growth at its heart.
Our new spring crop, our string bean girls,
they are seeded and watered under glass:
their pink and purple kernels and pale green shoots
induced to scarlet brilliance too soon.
How painful to watch their leggy growth,
as they tremble on the edge of early fruiting.
Blessed is the harvest that ripens with time;
we, we tear them early from the vine.

Dangerous Truth
(for the Kabul women’s poetry club)

'both personal and political’
it always is

poetry is personal
everything is political

even here, in the cosy west,
they lie in wait for us

‘they’ would have us believe
that the war is over

they would have us
put up our bright swords

'writing poetry is a sin'
but once our mouths closed on it,
once we had tasted
its clear, sweet juice
then we were lost to their authority

now many of us write in secret
‘we talk to the paper’
we talk freely
our hearts speak
it is better than the silence
that is death

A Pushcart nominee for 2013, Abigail Wyatt writes poetry and short fiction from her home near Redruth in Cornwall. She has been published in more than eighty magazines and journals and her poetry has been widely anthologized. Her website is at abiwyatt.wix.com.

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Stefanie Bennett - Two Poems

August 30, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: John Grey - Three Poems

≪ Previous: Abigail Wyatt - Two Poems

Anti-Politic's Thumbnail

Whoever's prophet material
Had best seek counsel
From the nation
Of the 'northern lights':

No velure head-hunter need apply -

No Moulin Rouge mudslinger -

No tyrannous protoplasm
Batting an evil eye -

Lucidity epitomises
The cold ground's
Imminent banter -

'Where man ends
The flame begins' *

And we will never
Put Prague
Or Jan Palach
Back together, again.

*Miroslav Holub

Tolstoy: Renunciation 2

Best forget why he's here
And from where he came;
If his step thundered
The blunt black bloodstone
Of gunfire
Amid the roses...

The Crimea wasn't a parking-lot, then.
A September suburb
Pummelled
By a double
Or nothing
Sequestrator.

Now, eavesdroppers
Unerringly
Find him
Defrocked,
Servile
And beating
Tellable ploughshares
Into words -,
Into a peace

That shatters.

Stefanie Bennett has published 18 books of poetry, acted as a publishing editor and worked with Arts Action for Peace. Of mixed ancestry [Italian/ Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee] she was born in Townsville, Qld., Australia. Stefanie's latest title 'The vanishing', Walleah Press is due at year's end.

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John Grey - Three Poems

August 31, 2014, 9:00 am

≫ Next: Michael Brautigan - Two Poems

≪ Previous: Stefanie Bennett - Two Poems

These Odds

In its old age, the universe

has become these people I know,

physically close, emotionally

at their far reaches.

In the motion of their recession.,

their red shift, they have turned

into spectral lines of cold faces,

crimson wavelengths of unflinching hearts.

Conversation now is the constant

ratio between speed and distance.

Love can be calibrated to 17

kilometers per second for each

million light years someone has

moved away from me.

The way they explain it,

75 perfect of everything is hydrogen,

25 percent is helium, and we're

whatever's left.

We float about, heavier, more

complex than the primordial stuff around us.

That we sometimes meet

is mathematical chance, scientific randomness.

But yes, sometimes odds will have their feelings.

Catching that Train

This train takes daily trips back to my adolescence.

It stops at the school dance. It waits for me

while I disembark, kiss Marianne.

And it doesn't even get jealous

when I ride the limo for a while.

I appreciate that it won't correct me

when memory and reality part ways.

If I say I aced the test, then it drops

me off in that classroom,

feeds me answers

like a Persian serving girl with grapes.

It doesn't talk me out of bad times.

If I want the day the old man

lost his job at the foundry,

it won't let me out a week before.

It's been to a sister's cancer a thousand times.

But never does it criticize

my request for that tearful station.

I can alter events, massage dates,

manufacture good times.

My ‘74 pickup runs fine.

The hot date is even hotter for my presence.

It's a train that accedes to

my navigation and my scenery.

I steer. I shovel coal into its belly.

With all this hard work,

I deserve the truth.

And, if not that, the lies.

The Road Out

The house is a highway,

silent but for the one car,

hands on the wheel,

foot on the accelerator,

roaring out of boredom or solitude -

you imagine the speed beyond the speed,

cutting through dimensions,

an intangible and problematic echo

of your journey -

you let go your fear

like a child in a field

celebrating the electric storm above

or deep in dark woods,

as one with all things gathering -

fleeing rooms,

past anything tangible,

each mile is cracked open like a shell,

dumping everything solid,

all that could slow you

ripping open the future

like loafs of fresh bread -

shouting your own name

that number on the speedometer,

breathing gas fumes to live by,

feet rocking,

hands slapping,

forgetting where you come from

and the long road back.

John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in Slant, Southern California

Review and Natural Bridge with work upcoming in the Kerf, Leading Edge and Louisiana Literature.

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Michael Brautigan - Two Poems

September 2, 2014, 10:51 am

≫ Next: Roscoe Matthews - One Poem

≪ Previous: John Grey - Three Poems

The Fairy Castle

It’s sad to watch
the wizards as they
duel with their lightning sticks.

Let’s hide behind the giant stones.
Let’s run away into the night.

The vines will embrace us.
The leaves will kiss us.
The water will speak to us
in whispers.

The snake said to put down the knife.
It is better to go around something
than actually have to confront it.
This is how you escape
from the labyrinth
that always takes more
than it gives.

The wizards will never stop fighting.
Only the moon cares about us.
Only the moon.

We will bide our time with the day.
We will make a deal with the circle.
We will never have to go back.
Our family is a pack of wolves.
It is once again the age of Aquarius.

Sea Breeze

A large question mark is sometimes better
than a little one, I guess.

The sun is up, and I’m finely starting
to get warm again.

Tunes sparking on the stereo.
Atoms are moving.
Time like a bandit is sitting on top of the fence
and smirking.
It makes the same kind of sense.
Leaves moving through the apocalypse.
Some guy is drawing a line in the dust
and pointing at it with a daedal index.

Scotch tape is better than tacks
or so the landlord thinks.

Life is kind of like a teeter-totter.
It’s good when someone else
is on the other end.

Michael Brautigan is a freelance writer, poet, literary scholar, and activist who graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in English. He has been published in the Milvia Street Journal, Blink-Ink, Undergroundwriter, and Collective Exile and has been an active member of online writing groups such as the New Surrealist Institute, World Poets Society, Inter Dada, and Poetry San Francisco.

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Roscoe Matthews - One Poem

September 3, 2014, 12:57 pm

≫ Next: Robert F. Gross - Two Poems

≪ Previous: Michael Brautigan - Two Poems

Dry Heat

the fever persists

the body reacts

none of this is new

i need a drink

i can't have one,

it's been twenty seven

and a half sober months

and still i find myself headed

for the car and on my way

imagining which magical

concoction i'll order first,

instead i drive around the block

back home to the quiet life where

my liver thanks me, my family thanks me,

my sheriff thanks me and for another day

the ship sails through the storm unscathed,

better off for having been reminded

of the challenge.

Roscoe Matthews is a former filmmaker, real estate broker, and forklift operator. He is currently a visual artist and poet. Matthews received his education from New York University.

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Robert F. Gross - Two Poems

September 7, 2014, 7:30 am

≫ Next: Donna J. Snyder - Two Poems

≪ Previous: Roscoe Matthews - One Poem

Death Sentence

Let’s all agree that we’ve had more than enough of words
And the savage orders we all impose on words.

The felonious heart, scarred and worked over, condemned
To the tool shop, gear shop, sweat shop of words.

Grinding out the witless drill of not quite good enough,
Not quite what I meant to in the hatchet job of words.

The chain gang conviction to a hackneyed meaning
Sweating shackled beneath the warden’s eye of words.

Crack-brained schemes crafted in solitary, silences sharpened
Into caesuras, breaths pried between thick blocks of words.

The lock-step procession of penitential formulations,
Confessions forced out across the fortress of words.

The shoulder-to-shoulder lined before the firing squad
Against the wall blindfolded with a cigarette of words.

The slip in your bloodstream, fall and rattle into silence:
Nothing so dead as the aftermath of words.

Philoctetes

Once they get what they want
we stop hearing about him

they get the bow and he looks
like death warmed over

relieved of command and of course
it never heals—that wound

festers worse than ever stinks
to high heaven—such a sucker

to swallow the standard issue
war time scams—camaraderie

and healing—the con games
of the generals and gods

he’s kept in his tent while
they put a new face—clean-shaven,

eager-beaver, bright-eyed killer—
on the Master of the Bow

keep this one confined to quarters
off the midway of History

cause it’s bad for morale
when the poison won’t come out

and you gag him—you’ll have to—
when he screams

Robert F. Gross is a nomadic writer, performer and theatrical director. Over sixty productions at the Bartlett Theater (Geneva, NY), the premiere of Kelly Burke's Zelda (London), Julius Ferraro's Micromania (Philadelphia), poems in The Camel Saloon, Epigraph, Dead Snakes, Danse Macabre, Sein und Werden, Philosophy After Dark. . .

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Donna J. Snyder - Two Poems

September 8, 2014, 12:01 pm

≫ Next: Ben Newell - One Poem

≪ Previous: Robert F. Gross - Two Poems

Shortest Distance Between Two Points

Fragments of photographs on the page

A walk along an uncharted path

The shortest distance between two points

not necessarily desired

A third point and we have a plane

The deus ex machina follows an earth eater

Graveled stone and mutilated plants

Masticated ash and dust falling from the god’s mouth

But matter can never be destroyed

only transformed

And it’s your duty as one of the chosen to walk

through this random chaos

Transform this momentary experience

through the mere act of observation

This hybrid moment

Part uncertainty principle

Part The Misfits

Give me a moment

Show me your eyes

Let the lies fall out of your mouth

Pieces of sky

Put my fingers on your scars

Piece together the fragmented photos

Give me this moment

This hybrid moment

Your consciousness

My consciousness

The shortest distance between two points

Connect the dots

Flayed Skin Spirals

“Think you’re escaping and run into yourself.” James Joyce

Throat chakra knotted in barbed wire clots words

Strangled blue energy becomes blackened blood

Emanations of green become brown fetid detritus

Clenched fist in the chest

Sternum crushed to powder

A brutality ash gray

Smell of suppuration leads to suffocation

Flayed skin spirals in meaningless glyphs

Corpus nothing but a hole

Vortex of broken glass

Jagged metal mesh leads no where

Banal emotions horrify the voice into silence

Panic leads to eviscerating dread

A mouth gagged with cliché

Flesh-stripping sorrow

The no more

Snyder is the author of Poemas ante el Catafalco: Grief and Renewal, released by Chimbarazu Press in 2014. Her chapbook, I Am South, was published by Virgogray Press in 2010. NeoPoiesis Press will publish her collection, Three Sides of the Same Moon, in 2015. She publishes often in VEXT Magazine and Red Fez and is a contributing poetry editor for Return to Mago.

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Ben Newell - One Poem

September 9, 2014, 8:30 am

≫ Next: Marianne Szlyk - One Poem

≪ Previous: Donna J. Snyder - Two Poems

Sunny Side Down

Fearing a DUI debacle,

I call a cab to pick me up at my apt.

and deliver me to the bar;

I tell the driver that I feel lucky,

lucky as in some sweet thing

is going to take me home,

adding that this is it between us,

good luck and be good as we’ll

never see each other again;

he laughs and hands me his card

because he knows better—

Sure enough, four hours later

finds my ass pressed into the

passenger seat, wasted and hoarse

from too many cigarettes and

trying to talk over the band;

it’s just as well; there’s nothing

to say in this confusion, staring at

the meter, analyzing yet another

poor performance, already dreading

the next noon; that’s when losing

really hurts, stretched out beneath

a hangover sun shining just for

you.

Ben Newell is a fortysomething library clerk in the Jackson, Mississippi area with poems appearing in Carcinogenic Poetry, LUMMOX, Negative Suck, Nerve Cowboy, Yellow Mama, and other underground publications.

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Marianne Szlyk - One Poem

September 11, 2014, 7:00 am

≫ Next: Tom Hall - One Poem

≪ Previous: Ben Newell - One Poem

Evening on Chinkapin Street

The men are talking
about evolution, about relativity,
about earth science and epistemology--
how do we know what we know.

On a nubby blue couch,
I yawn, and the world blurs.
The night, half-heard words,
chirping music, and
the body, that ragdoll,
are all part of a dream
while the men are talking.

When I’m sitting with you,
our words turn the night to ocean.
We’re stranded in a lighthouse.
No, we’re safe in our sanctuary
where small oranges glow in glass bowls,
their scent and color brightening
this salty, mildewed room.

Finished with the visit,
we each take an orange
and go out on the porch.
I break off a vine branch.
Its last leaf rides the dry wind.
Dark cats depart the house.
I say goodbye to you drily.
There is no more ocean tonight.

Marianne Szlyk is a professor of English at Montgomery College and an associate poetry editor at Potomac Review. Her poems have appeared in Poppy Road Review, The Blue Hour Literary Magazine, Pyrokinection, Poetry Pacific, Storm Cycle 2013: The Best of Kind of a Hurricane Press, and elsewhere. Others are forthcoming. She edits a poetry e-zine athttp://thesongis.blogspot.com/

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Tom Hall - One Poem

September 14, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: J.J. Campbell - One Poem

≪ Previous: Marianne Szlyk - One Poem

Sonnet: And bridges

The very dew of life lies soft and low,
Its faint humidity is mist to mind.
All of love’s senses must converge and grow,
As saplings that find and bind, a life intertwined.

Comes in from Nature as that is the base,
Upheaving the thick paint, pastels and a dove,
In the flush of your cheeks and the hue of all races,
Its the Northern Lights unleashed to color our love.

The most beautiful thing you will ever behold
Is the face of your child just a few hours old,
It’s a moment in life that can’t be foretold,
Six loves intertwined and made manifold.

Crack the shell of self love to another,
Bridges to each other, mother, son or lover.

Tom Hall recently retired from a career as a grant writer. Educated in literary criticism, but has always wondered if he might be one of "those that can". He is honored to be published for the first time by Carcinogenic Poetry.

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J.J. Campbell - One Poem

September 18, 2014, 3:49 pm

≫ Next: Michael Ceraolo - One Poem

≪ Previous: Tom Hall - One Poem

Hot Phone Sex on a Tuesday Night

it was the unexpected

words from nowhere

almost like things

just fell right back

into place after many

long months of silence

not that i'm complaining

it certainly makes me

smile to close my eyes

and imagine you getting

ready to straddle my face

as locks get checked

and blinds pulled

some chemistry is just

meant to be

J.J. Campbell lives and writes on a farm in Ohio. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Fuck Art, Let's Dance, The Camel Saloon, Jellyfish Whispers, Dead Snakes, and Pink Litter. His latest book, Sofisticated White Trash (Interior Noise Press) is available wherever you happen to buy books these days.

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Michael Ceraolo - One Poem

September 24, 2014, 9:51 am

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≪ Previous: J.J. Campbell - One Poem

from The Degreening of America Book Two

"A man can patent a mouse trap

or copyright a nasty song"

"but

if he gives to the world a new fruit

that will add millions to the value

of the earth's annual harvest

he will be fortunate

if he is rewarded by so much

as having his name connected with the result"

-Luther Burbank (1849-1926)

developer of over 800

new strains and varieties of plants

And though it wouldn't benefit Burbank,

it would be just a few years later

that the situation was rectified,

and

the idea that someone could patent life

was given government approval

with the passage of the Plant Patent Act of 1930

(Title III of the egregious Hawley-Smoot Tariff)

"This will,

I feel sure,

give us many Burbanks"

but

the act,

and future amendments,

etc.,

gave us Monsanto instead-----

Michael Ceraolo is a 56-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had one full-length book (Euclid Creek, Deep Cleveland Press) and a few shorter-length books published, and has a second full-length book, Euclid Creek Book Two, forthcoming from Unbound Content Press.

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Gary Beck - Three Poems

September 25, 2014, 7:30 am

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Urban Asylum

The demented trudge the streets,
some salvaging cans, bottles,
laboring for normality,
entrepreneurial
in the madness of city life.
Others rave to themselves,
or passing strangers,
frightening them
with mumbling incantations
from men possessed by demons,
abandoned by their meds.
Most homeless are inconspicuous
hoping to survive
a hostile environment.
unconcerned with the balance
between euro and dollar
allowing hordes of foreigners
avid for tourist experience
to aim intrusive cameras
at degraded spectacles.

Housing Crisis

I got off the plane,
my wife was waiting,
crying, glad to see me,
told me through tears
the bank foreclosed our house
while I was in Afghanistan
bringing democracy to tribesmen
who lost their homes in battle,
while I lost mine
serving my country.

Approaching Storm

Once the cry,
'Rome has fallen',
echoed in Europe,
Africa, Asia,
no one mourned,
save a few Romans,
as civilization
crumbled away,
leaving darkness
for those dependent
on the empire.

When America falls,
China will not assume
the burden of policeman
to unruly nations
that value sovereignty
before humanity,
fracturing
the hope of peace.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director. He has seven published chapbooks. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.

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