Desi St. Amant - One Poem

October 29, 2015, 7:00 am

The Words She Wore

When she first spoke,
words were leaden with bookish facts
sandwiched with rehearsed one-liners
like a stiff, over-sized suit: It was pressed,
it was clean
but could not conceal her slouch
and anxious smile,
with pointy shoulders
and boxed silhouette
heaping years onto her youthful façade.
with practice and wheeling seasons
she continued her quest for knowledge
exploring the narratives of sages
uncovering truths from storytellers,
playing match-maker for her
ambitious neurons, phrases, and clauses.
soon, her words became a
faded, well-worn band t-shirt
fitting her like a glove
mapping the unchartered curves, twists and turns
she always knew her mind held.

Desi is a new writer, and her work is inspired by the countless people who have touched her life somehow: loved ones, complete strangers, and estranged acquaintances. Currently, Desi teaches 9^th grade English and 12^th grade AP Literature in Southern California, where she lives with her artist husband and two adventurous little boys.

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Susan Beall Summers - One Poem

October 30, 2015, 7:00 am

≫ Next: Heather McCroskey - One Poem

≪ Previous: Desi St. Amant - One Poem

Seeing Infinity

Focus not on the forest

or the trees,

look for the small animals

beneath the leaf litter:

snakes, toads, turtles.

Look closer,

find snails, beetles,

fungus, worms,

and microscopic

amoeba, paramecium, bacteria -

transforming rot into resources,

creating vital nutrients.

The lowliest comprise the base

of all life where they digest and recycle.

Process everything at this lowly level;

find the atoms and split them,

transform matter into energy-

mushrooming above the canopy,

through clouds, beyond our atmosphere.

to planets with their rings, moons, storms

to stars: giants, dwarfs, dying, birthing,

headlines from hundreds of years past-

to the edge of our Milky Way,

to Andromeda and

billions of other galaxies

created by our searching,

beyond imagination.

See infinity in the smallest and the largest.

Recognize the parts in the whole

and the magnificence of universal light,

feel insignificant

except for the wonder of having a place

and a purpose to love all of it.

Susan Beall Summers is a positive and lively Austin poet. She has been published in Ilya’s Honey, Texas Poetry Calendar, Harbinger Asylum, Small Canyons & Anthology, Di-Verse-City, Yellow Chair Review, Cattails, Nothing. No One. Nowhere., and others. Mor info at www.tidalpoolpoet.com

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Heather McCroskey - One Poem

May 17, 2016, 11:22 am

≫ Next: Sophia Nicole Feliciano - One Poem

≪ Previous: Susan Beall Summers - One Poem

Learning to Drown

I remember the “dead man” sink, the way
legs drag my body down.
Tangled arms block my swimmer stroke
too tired to flail.
My matted scalp bobs underneath
then remerges
like thoughts.

A bloated chest leaks bubbles to my throat
parting screams between ripples,
I breathe salt instead of clean air.
They taste like tears.
I forgot how to float.
and time between tides.
Would sinking suffice?

I roll with the current
hoping I would erode with time,
that impulses would fade
(step into the busy street,
feel the heat of the fire)
desires would climb
(see how long exposed veins flow,
swing as the weight of the rope)
urges would die.
The wave tumbles me over, surfaced
flat-backed against the world below.

Heather McCroskey, Jane of all trades, applies social learning as insight into our moral capacities and reactions to conflict in her writings. With a BA in Writing and currently completing 2D Animation, she combines verbal and visual elements in her creativity. Heather also enjoys long walks in the woods, comic books, and some cats are okay.

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Sophia Nicole Feliciano - One Poem

May 18, 2016, 7:30 am

≫ Next: Josef Krebs - One Poem

≪ Previous: Heather McCroskey - One Poem

The Past

Between the hours of one and four

A rippling, flowing, stream of fragile thought fills the tub of lucid, conscious sleep.

Yesterday’s voices become lost in a warbled, untethered folk song of homeless sentiment.

The odds and ends of irreconcilable, unfinished business echoing, lonely.

Muscles continue to sleep in paralysis.

defenseless to the pummeling of fresh dirt borne of my unearthed.

Yes, all of that is still there, laying with during rest, talking in the blackness.

Bygone relics hovering close, and the staunch clock.

Five is the hand to turn away this spellbinding middle existence

so that I may sleep shallowly once more,

tuned into the static of tomorrow’s station.

Sophia Nicole Feliciano’s poetry and prose is sensory and stimulating, often dreamlike in description. Poetry is her method of painting and preserving her own personal history in an art form which may give rise to new life through ambiguity. Her work is set against the backdrops of Los Angeles and San Francisco, California, where she spends most of her time. She is a hand model, writer, and avid cook who ultimately wishes to publish a volume of poetry for the modern woman.

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Josef Krebs - One Poem

May 19, 2016, 7:00 am

≫ Next: Fraser Sutherland - Two Poems

≪ Previous: Sophia Nicole Feliciano - One Poem

Glancing homeward through the ages

I last longer than I last lasted
Entranced by the possibilities that didn't seem possible
At that time of doubt and external deliberations
Stopping the singing
In the darkened room
Under the covers
Of the night
When dreams naturally flow forth
Before colliding with the walls
Ceilings inserted in the I-don't mind
As if nothing would ever change
And the prisoners would never be released
But eliminated before liberation
Saved from slaughter
Or self-disgust
Instilled by the conquerors
The masterful race that ran the hotel
Where you didn’t belong
But collaboration was the only option during daily exercises in purposelessness and
passivity
Until night landed and resistance became possible

Josef Krebs has a chapbook of his poems published by Etched Press and his poetry also appears in Agenda, Bicycle Review,Calliope, Mouse Tales Press, The Corner Club Press, The FictionWeek Literary Review, Burningword Literary Journal,Crack the Spine, and The Cats Meow. A short story has been published by blazeVOX. He’s written three novels and five screenplays. His film was successfully screened at Santa Cruz and Short Film Corner of Cannes film festivals.

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Fraser Sutherland - Two Poems

May 23, 2016, 8:58 am

≫ Next: Ally Malinenko - One Poem

≪ Previous: Josef Krebs - One Poem

Letter To Jim Jones

Some reduction is achievable

in documentary impedimenta:

your voice, rant, rave.

Not that words often do good.

Nor did your words.

To write about you makes us captive

like those who followed you.

You returned them to earth,

to jungle putrefaction.

They lay with you in the hacked space

you called a town and persuaded us

that all should rot and let us smell you.

Living With Mother

And this is how it may be:

I, replacing my father, sit at the window,

besieged by my mother's anxieties

about a ceiling falling, an incontinent cat,

and I will be blamed,

blamed if it happens, blamed

for the fear of its happening.

I will retreat to the cruelty of silence,

my face averted to the window

or take a walk, talking to myself,

or drink and drink and drink,

one moment stuporous, the other

recriminative. My mother,

anxious with her murderous headache,

lives on and on,

and I, my father's shell, await my end.

Fraser Sutherland is a poet and lexicographer. He's published 17 books, nine of them poetry, most recently, The Philosophy of As If.

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Ally Malinenko - One Poem

May 24, 2016, 7:30 am

≫ Next: Donna M. Davis - Three Poems

≪ Previous: Fraser Sutherland - Two Poems

Porn

I wonder if those hard little tits hurt more

shoved into the mammogram machine.

I wonder if they’ve ever had a sonogram,

been sung to by that gentle click and whir,

sat on the paper-lined table

and been told by a grim-faced technician

that the doctor will be right in.

No, I tell myself,

they are too young,

but then again,

statistically

so am I.

And I wonder

if anyone in her family has been tested,

if she knows about any risks.

Her tits are perfect

which is a stupid observation.

She’s in porn.

the job requirements might not be extensive

but I’m sure a flat stomach

and perfect tits are two of them.

The scar across my nipple stares up at me

unblinking

like an expectant child waiting for its turn

on the merry-go-round.

The sticker, inked black by a technician with a sharpie

is a crosshair just below my clavicle.

It’s the marker where the radiation beam

must be shot

every

single

day.

But for her

there is just skin

supple and young.

On the screen

the man, slick and shiny

comes

and the girl

smiles a loose, gratified smile.

She makes the same face

I had hoped to make

on my own

which was the whole point of this.

The video ends

and I slide my hand

from between my legs,

roll over on the bed,

whisper,

Fuck you, cancer.

You ruined even this.

Ally Malinenko is the author of The Wanting Bone and How to Be An American (Six Gallery Press) as well as the YA novel This is Sarah (Bookfish Books). Her most recent poetry book, Better Luck Next Year is forthcoming from Low Ghost Books. She tweets at @allymalinenko mostly about David Bowie, Doctor Who and stupid cancer.

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Donna M. Davis - Three Poems

May 25, 2016, 7:00 am

≫ Next: Sudeep Adhikari - Two Poems

≪ Previous: Ally Malinenko - One Poem

Stolen

I walked outside

and all the words were gone;

the neighborhood was

empty of language.

Winter snow howled

a snaking silence.

No one was talking

about anything that mattered.

Unctuous politicians

with bad hair

had posted selfies,

taken billboards captive,

and stolen the thoughts

from every mind in the world.

Porches were missing

their morning newspapers,

but computers were turned on

to the vacuous websites of celebrity.

Someone famous had died,

and someone, who someone else

really knew, was dying

quietly offstage.

Cancer, heart attacks, suicides,

falls on the sidewalk ice,

brains fevered with crack,

none of this appeared

in daily obituaries

of the unrenowned.

The air was dense with

smothering disconnect,

and the robot voices of

talking heads sucked up truth

and spat it out sideways.

Gym rats treadmilled

sequences of monotony,

anesthetized in place,

watched overhead TVs

in separate slots,

anxious to get home

and access their electronics

for another fix.

The words were still there,

but imprisoned,

clogged in boxes

with arrows, icons,

and cascading squares,

leading to more details,

opening up page after page,

and saying absolutely nothing.

Salvation

The church had a basement chapel,

where votive candles flickered

on painted statues of saints.

A blonde, wafer-colored Christ,

wrapped in a winding sheet,

rested inside the communion altar,

visible through rectangular glass.

Solitary worshippers knelt down

in a single row of wooden pews,

sheltered in dusky shadow.

I went there because it was quiet,

because of the holy water font

shaped like a grotto with wet stones

covered in velvety green moss;

pennies lined its basin,

coppery with prayer.

I could hide there after school,

escape the harsh taunts

of mean girls in plaid skirts

and crewcut boys with thick necks.

I could walk to the back chamber,

where a life-sized plaster Jesus,

crowned with coiled thorns,

stood in a wrought iron prison

his back to barred windows

that framed the church parking lot.

If I stared at him too long,

he would seem to move a finger,

or roll an eye filled with blood,

as if he understood what I felt.

I kept this to myself all these years:

how I forced the lock of his cell,

when no one was around,

how I pressed holy water

to his forehead with a handkerchief,

and left the door open wide.

Perfection

A teenage girl faces the mirror

and searches for it,

in the fullness of a breast,

the bow of an arched back.

Maybe she thinks a flicker of blue

brushed on narrow eyelids,

or pink dust on flat cheekbones

will bring her closer.

She stumbles toward its portal,

naked and unguarded,

presses her body

against the plane of glass.

The girl is trapped in an illusion,

not understanding perfection’s

improbably sublime surfaces

and smooth curves.

She doesn’t realize the truth,

but cries and turns away,

while flawed spheres of atoms

spiral and shower around her.

Donna M. Davis is a native of the Central New York region. A former English teacher, she owns a resume writing and book design business. Her poetry has appeared in Third Wednesday, Poecology, The Centrifugal Eye, Red River Review, Ilya’s Honey, Gingerbread House , Oddball Magazine, The Milo Review, Halcyon Magazine, The Comstock Review, Aberration Labyrinth, and others. She has work forthcoming this summer in Slipstream Anthology. She was a special merit finalist and winner of several of The Comstock Review’s national awards contests.

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Sudeep Adhikari - Two Poems

May 26, 2016, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Carl Boon - Two Poems

≪ Previous: Donna M. Davis - Three Poems

Tree is a Fractalscape

A shape of silence stands green
on the skeletal wood-bones
and the other day, it wept
the entire sky, criss-crossed clouds
and her thunderous
lightening gloom.
A tree is the shortest distance
between two infinities,
she is not a straight line.
Above and beneath, ether and soil
a songster tree, sweetly conjures
the ancient alchemy
of "coniunctio Oppositorium".
a deathless God, resides in a finite flesh
fractal conjoined.

Grunge and Conscience

Once I saw Stone Temple Pilots in Cleveland,
there I lied to an army friend, straight to her face
that she was fighting
in Middle-East for democracy and peace .
we preserved our individual illusions
and continued enjoying
the coked-out antics of Scott Wieland
may his deceased soul rest in peace;
Born in California, died in a tour bus 12/03/2015
Grunge is dead; as dead as the conscience of Kathmandu,
Washington and other self-delusional Atlantes.

Sudeep Adhikari, from Kathmandu Nepal, is professionally a PhD in Structural-Engineering. He lives in Kathmandu with his wife and family and works as an Engineering-Consultant. His poetry has found place in many online literary journals/magazines, the recent being Kyoto (Japan), Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada) and Red Fez (USA).

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Carl Boon - Two Poems

May 27, 2016, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Francis Annagu - One Poem

≪ Previous: Sudeep Adhikari - Two Poems

The News From Aleppo

Walking the mosque wall
where her father fell
to shrapnel, Malek,
the girl they call Angel,
imagines the Mediterranean.
Green expanses, dolphins,
islands free of screaming.
She would like to have her baby
there, to soothe its belly
and shoulders, to feed it
as seven clouds move east.

Sadri the Bookseller
on the mosque steps bristles.
Malek comes close to smell
the ink on his fingers,
which reminds her
of her father, and to smell
the cherry tobacco in his pipe.
What’s left of her home
is a moonstruck wall
and piles of debris.

The Russian bombs
fall when they are sleeping,
she and the baby inside her.
Mother sleeps late,
thinking of orange groves,
her brother’s bicycle
propped against the gate.
The mornings were sunnier
then, with her mother’s kitchen
calling her for lunch
and the men crossing
the road to pray.

See My Heart

Gone save the shadow
of her hair between the hills,

she left me with a fragment
of a song, something she heard

in a Kadıköy bar one night
late with ferries and peddlers:

“See my heart
decorated like a grave.”

I’ve forgotten the wording,
but not her, who stood always

with her face to the sea-
wind, her denim ambition,

her legs stretched
on the boulders, a flower

in her hand. The lover says
to the lover: you will glimpse

a remnant of me in memory;
you will writhe and sink

into the stone-heart
of being, but never die.

The heart only, painted,
mishandled, terrifying—

crushed into bunting, black
ribbon, and a broken song.

Carl Boon lives and works in Izmir, Turkey. His poems appear in dozens of magazines, most recently Two Thirds North, Jet Fuel Review, Blast Furnace, and the Kentucky Review.

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Francis Annagu - One Poem

June 5, 2016, 11:52 pm

≫ Next: Cara Losier Chanoine - Three Poems

≪ Previous: Carl Boon - Two Poems

Carutu

The blue Carutu river
Throbbs, throbbing
Flows, flowing into
Black canvasses of the garage.
The day is full spring in
The scabrous sky of birds,
Egrets winging off up upon hills,
Peaked pointed hill's gaze,
Gazing to clouds of coloured
Rainbow portraiting the orchard;
Rainbow. Painted orchard.

Francis Annagu is published or forthcoming on Galway Review, Potomac Review, Tuck Magazine, Ayiba Magazine, Lunaris Review and others. He lives in Kaduna, Nigeria where he is working on his debut poetry book.

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Cara Losier Chanoine - Three Poems

June 9, 2016, 9:06 am

≫ Next: Glen Armstrong - One Poem

≪ Previous: Francis Annagu - One Poem

Pretty Lies Show Their Teeth

The smashed orchid on the sidewalk
has been doctored: beribboned, and dyed.
Its petals are wilting, rimmed with dirt.
This prom night roadkill
kindles memories of itchy zippers and silver eyeshadow.
I used to count the bobby pins in my hair
as I pulled them free at the end of the night.
Every evening gown felt like a costume,
and the cruelty of these rituals lies in their deception,
as they stir the desire to be pretty and in love
in ways that have never been real,
will never be real.
We are taught to believe these fantasies
from childhood,
lies that leave us unprepared
to be so disillusioned by their aftermath.
I remember the cut of the dress
that I wore to my first formal dance,
and the creases it left in my skin
when I woke up in it the next morning.
I felt hollow, like my body was nothing more
than a papier-mâché crust,
just as vulnerable as an orchid corsage
crushed against the ground.

Drugstore Banquet

When I was eighteen,
and my roommate wanted to kill herself,
she left a note where she knew I would find it.
It was covered in a mosaic of pills,
far ranging in opacity and hue.
When I returned to the room with help,
the note was gone.
The pills had been dumped into a plastic bowl
printed with cartoon characters.
Not all cries for help are in languages I can understand.
Later, when she was expelled from school,
I felt the requisite regret for being unable
to translate her disturbances
in a way that might have mattered.
When I think of her now,
in passing,
I wonder if she’s alive,
and whether she still stacks pills in cereal bowls,
like breakfast rations
for the last day she’ll ever have,
like last resorts
in case she lasts too long.

Tires for Tombstones
on a painting at the Artists’ Hand Gallery

These woods are where
trucks go to die,
a graveyard of rusted chassis in place of monuments,
collected wheels adorned with clots of mud.
There’s a sacredness to the juxtaposition
of industrial steel and rampant weeds,
to the hulking, metal machines,
driven through the trees and left to their slow rot.
No one carts them away.
The roots grow through their open spaces.
It’s almost like they belong here.

Cara Losier Chanoine is a poet, fiction writer, and teacher from New England. She is a four-time competitor in the National Poetry Slam, and her first collection of poems was released by Scars Publications in 2013. She loves books, rats, bad horror movies, and David Bowie.

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Glen Armstrong - One Poem

June 19, 2016, 7:33 am

≫ Next: J. Lewis - One Poem

≪ Previous: Cara Losier Chanoine - Three Poems

Golden Years

Grandfather dreamed
of a champagne

that would stir rebellion
throughout the vineyard.

Grandmother dreamed
of a fur that might rejoin

and resurrect the animal
from which it was ripped.

They held hands with conviction.
There was something they needed

to set straight
but no one left would listen

to their dream-words,
those raspy, whispering yelps

from which language
was born.

Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has three recent chapbooks: Set List (Bitchin Kitsch,) In Stone and The Most Awkward Silence of All (both Cruel Garters Press.) His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit and Cloudbank.

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J. Lewis - One Poem

June 20, 2016, 9:08 am

≫ Next: John Mingay - One Poem

≪ Previous: Glen Armstrong - One Poem

Filler Text

lorem ipsum he said

you know

the stuff you use

when you don't have content

but you need to see

the lay of the land

the fit of the phrase

the pattern on the page

but my hearing is going

and i swear he said

dolores whips 'em

and i stopped listening

because i had an instant nightmare

the spanish inquisition

led not by the church

but by the household servants

where anything

and everything i said

had been heard

recorded

reported

the accusations cracked

like a whip

against my conscience

splaying my resolve

laying my heart as bare

as a tree in winter

oh, yes i thought

oh, yes

no one ever hides the truth

when sweet dolores whips 'em

J. Lewis is an internationally published poet, musician, and nurse practitioner. When he is not otherwise occupied, he is often on a kayak, exploring and photographing the waterways near his home in California.

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John Mingay - One Poem

June 21, 2016, 10:21 am

≫ Next: Ivan Jenson - Two Poems

≪ Previous: J. Lewis - One Poem

Downwind

I never could

splinter

the waxing waters

of a certain

single flood

coming in

pounding

each minute

beyond being gone

I never was

strong enough

from any

to others

to have beaten

the morning cold

my breath a fog

thick

like the smiling wind

with evil in its eyes

but you

prone to paying

for whatever is gifted

may never

have plucked

even one short word

from many

a prayer

though

like you

whatever I felt

was felt

as if in my blood

our blood

above ambition

the years

having passed us by

From Paisley, John spent the late 1970's working at The Citizens' Theatre and 1985-90 as Writer-in-Residence and Writer-in-the-Community in Darlington. As managing editor of Raunchland Publications from 1984 to 2009, he initiated and edited 3x4 magazine and the Lung Gom Press, and continues to be widely published in literary reviews, anthologies, collaborative projects and in over forty individual collections.

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Ivan Jenson - Two Poems

June 27, 2016, 9:00 am

≫ Next: John Grochalski - One Poem

≪ Previous: John Mingay - One Poem

Going Green

You have shared
very profound insights
into the human condition
and shown yourself
to be an intellect of
the highest order
while
shedding light
on important
dark issues
while alluding
to some bigger
implications
which could
effect the well being
of generations to come
however, I confess
I have been
unable to fully
absorb
your brilliant
truth
due to
a spinach chive
on your front
tooth

Spring Cleaning
May I give you
a deconstructive
criticism
concerning
your post-modern
past tense
predicament
which led
to your current
state of unease
and do you mind
if I point you
away from
your newfound fame
in the blame game
where your parents
are at fault
for the sink-hole
you are in
and may I
hit you
below
the belt
with my tough
love
and thereby
bring you
to your knees
so that you get down
to scrubbing
the floors of
your subconscious
until everything is
spic and span
and your attitude
changes to “Yes, I can!”

Ivan Jenson is a fine artist, novelist and contemporary poet. His artwork was featured in Art in America, Art News, and Interview Magazine and has sold at auction at Christie’s. Ivan has written two novels, Dead Artist and Seeing Soriah, both of which illustrate the creative and often dramatic lives of artists. Jenson's poetry is widely published (with over 500 poems published in the US, UK and Europe) in a variety of literary media. Ivan Jenson's website is: www.IvanJenson.com

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John Grochalski - One Poem

July 5, 2016, 9:43 am

≫ Next: Michael Lee Johnson - One Poem

≪ Previous: Ivan Jenson - Two Poems

Watching The Fat Kid Play Video Games

he hasn’t been in here for months

because the other kids were making fun of him

this afternoon, they’re leaving him alone

caught up in their own stupid boy/girl dramas

he’s as good as the mildew stain on this wall

….for now

fat kids pray for small miracles like this

moments of calm within the maelstrom

of insults and indignities

i know because i was one

obese double chinned sweatpants wearing

bad hair pimpled glasses wouldn’t fit over my face

tailored polyester pants xxl t-shirt man tits

wouldn’t go bare chested on a beach or in a pool to save my life

especially if there were girls around

until i starved myself for a small vanity at seventeen

told myself a little conformity never hurt anyone

i still carry that fat kid with me

into every relationship

you just never get too close to people

because the past has shown you just how easily they turn

i wish more for the fat kid sitting here

playing video games on his phone

more than a life of caution and a well of distrust

small moments that evaporate

with the blink of some bastard’s eye

i hope he learns how to come through the fire

better than i ever did

hope he carves out

some simple kind of happiness

finds his niche his crowd his tribe

learns it’s okay too to make it alone

i think how a little bit of optimism

never hurt anyone either

but soon the conversation

of the other kids dies down

the taps on the shoulders and the whispers

and the giggles through cupped mouths begin

the fat kid playing video games

can tell it just as well as i can

this sixth sense we’ve been saddled with

and as he gets up to leave before the onslaught even comes

i want to tell him something

something that’ll make this all right

but i just say, take it easy, man

and he doesn’t even answer me

just breaks for the door and is gone like a phantom

before the first cackle bursts

from the cacophony

of those ignorant, well-formed

well-adjusted mouths.

John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), the novel, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013), and the forthcoming novel, The Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press 2016). Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, in the section that doesn’t have the bike sharing program.

↧

Michael Lee Johnson - One Poem

July 15, 2016, 10:58 am

≫ Next: Greg Moglia - Two Poems

≪ Previous: John Grochalski - One Poem

Flight of the Eagle

From the dawn, dusty skies
comes the time when
the eagle flies-
without thought,
without aid of wind,
like a kite detached without string,
the eagle in flight leaves no traces,
no trails, no roadways-
never a feather drops
out of the sky.

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. He is a Canadian and USA citizen. Today he is a poet, editor, publisher, freelance writer, amateur photographer, small business owner in Itasca, Illinois. He has been published in more than 880 small press magazines in 27 countries, and he edits 10 poetry sites. Author's website http://poetryman.mysite.com/.

↧

Greg Moglia - Two Poems

September 1, 2016, 10:04 am

≫ Next: Richard Schnap - Two Poems

≪ Previous: Michael Lee Johnson - One Poem

The Silk Nightie

The sales associate at Victoria’s Secret is all smiles

I ask her the guy question I’m not sure about the size

She gives my aged lines that “so you got yourself a trophy” look and says

Give me an idea about her frame

I say About the same as you, kinda slim, tall…

Then she surprises me This for the wife? No, a girl friend

Now a gossipy gleam in her eye

Oh, about how old is she?

I say firmly She’s 68.

Now, she glows, I’ve just become a geezer sweetheart

She flips to a caring mode

Maybe, you want something more subtle?

Oh great! Back to married nights and birth control jammies

Oh no, I’m sorry…I’m so sorry I just thought you might go for something quieter

Yeah, I say We do try to have old fogey sex…nice and quiet

God forbid a yell, a deep moan, a screech - wake the neighbors

She says Well, sorry again just trying to be helpful

I say There’s more to look forward to than you believe

Frank

The science teachers party at your home and I meet George - your friend

I begin to wonder, Frank - you may be one of the guys I joked about

Subject of endless ridicule - homo, queer, fag…

But you were my chair and I needed the job

Then the morning we found my classroom door broken

Blood stained…lab scales gone

The superintendent of schools calls you to his office

The same guy who says to his teachers on opening day 1969

You folk in nigger heaven back there

Come on down to the front seats

And Frank I see you after that meeting

Looking so troubled and pale - holding a tiny book

Poems of Emily Dickinson and I say

Is she any good? and you said

At this time she’s very good

Easy to guess what the boss said, A fag like you…

And I could see your life in compartments

As mine - pretending an interest in Chemistry

And the easy world of sexuality I grew into

Us and those others - the gay guys - never to meet

But you’re my boss and as nice as could be

I think of a dinner party - three long married couples

As we leave I move to shake my friend Paddy’s hand

I move too close and stop -yes, I only shook his hand

But know inside… a kiss

Greg Moglia's work has appeared in over 300 journals in the U.S., Canada, England, India, Australia, Sweden,Austria and Belgium.as well as five anthologies. Among the journals - Peregrine, Southern Humanities Review, English Journal, South Carolina Review, Tampa Review, Wisconsin Review.

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Richard Schnap - Two Poems

September 2, 2016, 9:56 am

≫ Next: Liz Glodek - One Poem

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As The Light Turned Grey

When the blue haired nurse
With the skeleton gloves
Asked what concerned you most
You replied “pain” and “fear”

And I secretly thought
That it is true that we
Become wise when the shadow
Of death waits at the foot of our bed

For you had arranged your life
To be empty of dark concerns
Like an amusement park designed
By a cartoon deity with laughing eyes

But now as the end approached
You relearned the lessons of those
Not as fortunate to blissfully forget
The knives of the world never grow dull

Loss For Words

He was a natural salesman
With the innate ability
To persuade even a sinner
To return home to God

Knowing that to do it
He must adopt the manner
And speech of the prospect
As seamlessly as a chameleon

But when tragedy befell him
And he had to find a way
To convince himself to forget
The shadow darkening his heart

He found he could never
Truly imitate himself
For he was now a stranger
Speaking a language of its own

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A two-time Best of the Net nominee, his poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas. His first chapbook, "A Wind From Nowhere", is available from Flutter Press.

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Liz Glodek - One Poem

September 3, 2016, 7:30 am

≫ Next: Mark Niehus - Two Poems

≪ Previous: Richard Schnap - Two Poems

It Is Nighttime

The stars wonder too, looking down at us,
where the dinosaurs have gone.
This lonely planet they see, a speck. But what
delight they get from all of our tumblings.
A scraped knee, the ant in the grass.
How the North Star lingers over these
moments. Quiet. To us, he is brilliantly alive
in gas and dust, through the vacuum
of darkness which is the solitude of space.
Come closer, we will tell them. More than
reason built this bridge, made this cathedral.
More than science loved this child. What they know
of us is less than what we know of them.
We shock them with our dreams.

Liz Glodek lives and works in the Midwest. Her work has appeared in several journals including The Greensboro Review, Lumina, North American Review (finalist for the James Hearst Poetry Prize), The North, and Janus Head. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College where she also founded the SLC Poetry Festival. She works in management consulting and is an instructor at Simpson College.

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Mark Niehus - Two Poems

September 6, 2016, 10:30 am

≫ Next: Charlotte Ozment - One Poem

≪ Previous: Liz Glodek - One Poem

Bluebird and the Cage

You measure yourself
against the world
during trips to the Laundromat.
You organise your words while
removing the stains on your shirt
and try to keep
the one thing you have in line.

And between
the beauty at parties
you see that there is something
sinister underlying
every social grace.

What a great power it must be
to suppress a spirit
that was once necessary
to invent,
explore
and love
and what do you do
when you sense
a flash of admiration
for its genius?

You refine your pleasure
for the drink.
You enjoy the movement it brings,
the action
and the chance.

And now somehow home
in pursuit of the poem
and in possession
of something good and rare,
something cracks open
that allocates meaning
and hope,
so you can sleep again balancing
the bluebird
and the cage.

Life Machine

The numbers turn
and the infinite mechanism
turns
and grows
and groans truths
and lies.

Such a beautiful machine
entrusting its success
to fulfil its design
on the emotional
unknowing
spirit of man.

And on us
the great weight rests.
It is that uneasy feeling
that comes some nights,
when left with our lives.

We are all working
to fuel
and to make up
the bony parts
of this mad living.

We turn
and burn
toward an outcome
unknown to us,
or this life machine.

Mark Niehus is a Poet and Artist who drives a cheese truck. He likes to get close to instinct and invention to create unique combinations of poetry, street art, music and performance.

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Charlotte Ozment - One Poem

September 8, 2016, 9:51 pm

≫ Next: Timothy Pilgrim - Two Poems

≪ Previous: Mark Niehus - Two Poems

Flood Waters

What’s that old saying?

water under the bridge....

It’s supposed to mean

what's in the past

is past

no problem

don't worry

it's gone, over,

forgotten....

But have you ever

looked under a bridge?

I mean, have you ever

taken the time

to jump over that railing,

slide down the embankment,

crawl under and around

those cement pillars?

Debris, flotsam,

logs, refrigerators,

dead animals....

....shit

Now you tell me,

how is that water

supposed to flow freely again

with all that crap

blocking its path?

Whoever wrote that adage

never experienced a flood....

Charlotte Ozment is a homesteading Texan on several acres full of devas, dogs and squirrels. She was a lifelong manual writer who is joyously devoting her retirement to right-brained pursuits.

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Timothy Pilgrim - Two Poems

September 8, 2016, 10:22 pm

≫ Next: Richard King Perkins II - One Poem

≪ Previous: Charlotte Ozment - One Poem

My Last Professor

(with a nod to Robert Browning)

There, see his portrait on the wall.

I believe him to be the exception,

not the rule. He lasted fall, winter,

almost till spring -- persevered, gave,

shall I say, not just light,

but hope – inspired a bit of love

to begin. Then new semester --

classes in lit, stats, chem,

attraction ebbing, new interest,

same pattern -- learning, powerful men.

Notice this photo, though, coup d'etat,

prize-winning biology prof

making dissected frogs

jump high again.

Light Found to Have Weight

Rod in hand, sun about to set,

I've found it heavier than flies --

even affects the cast, slows line

looping through red sky

toward foam on the dark, far side.

At times, light seems to force

a ribboned splash, scatter rainbow

before my Black Ghost touches down.

At dawn, I have seen it rise groggy,

barely able to clear meadow grass,

likely from carrying all that dew

layered on by summer night.

The dying know, too, full well

it's true, cease to resist,

succumb to light heaviness

holding down gray eyelids.

They willingly give up fishing,

having reached their limit.

Timothy Pilgrim, a Pacific Northwest poet and emeritus associate professor of journalism at Western Washington University, has published over 300 poems -- with acceptances from journals like Seattle Review, Windfall, Cirque, San Pedro River Review, Third Wednesday and Carcinogenic Poetry. He is author of Mapping Water(Flying Trout Press, 2016). His work can be found at timothypilgrim.org.

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Richard King Perkins II - One Poem

October 13, 2016, 11:58 pm

≪ Previous: Timothy Pilgrim - Two Poems

Pale Necks of Lavender

Sweeping almost freely

eternal willows
respire

soon to be tangled
by afternoon’s
westward moving air

swaying pale necks
of lavender

rustling her blond hair
as he skips stones
across

their secret pond—

an uncovered rock
thrown
snap-wrist

finds
its new place

only to settle
and become old
once again

Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He lives in Crystal Lake, IL, USA with his wife, Vickie and daughter, Sage. He is a three-time Pushcart nominee and a Best of the Net nominee whose work has appeared in more than a thousand publications.

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