Sarah Gamutan- A Poem

 

NO DOMINION

 

The trigger filled the barrel while the rest kept

inside guns of what they called themselves haters.

It was cold here that night when avengers invaded

this olden island. I knew what they meant when they

said death. They told me not only  the jungle got killed

 

but the rest of the men, too. They said losers like me

had to be careful, get my canteen, walk sparely, act

unbeaten and stay strong - boned. I was drenched with

blood,  but they just spat their wits on me, that they said

those were only tears and sweat, those got transparent

 

and numb, those got stupid too. They told me I'd never win

any battle, that I would only be a liability. At first, I discreetly

grabbed those armaments. Some of them are lethal. I saw them

looking at me dumbfounded. They snickered at my recessive

 

head - that head you knew which would always be bullied

and throbbed. They counted down my life. I conformed

to them, finally, so I'd  live. I had to be dominated. I knew

 

this place lived for only once that we had to pull those

triggers, shoot the rest til birds on trees got awakened

that we made their sarcophagus, instead. Once again,

these triggers didn't stop laughing. I was still helpless.

 

   

Sarah Gamutan's poems are forthcoming in Sparkbright Magazine, Poetry Space and Subliminal Interiors Magazine. You can visit her website at www.poetrypoem.com/sarahgamutan or find her at www.facebook.com/sarah06142010.

Christopher Hivner- A Poem

Revolutions

I rode the train all night
from the docks
to the avenues,
uptown to midtown,
past the projects
through industrial park,

and she slept next to me
for hours,
her head on my shoulder,
half-sentences
squeaking from
thin, naked lips,
her hands occasionally
grabbing at the air,
strands of soft hair
playing over
her forehead.

She had gotten on
at the avenues,
the seat next to me
the only empty,
she made a call
then was out,
sliding into my side
when we curled
past midtown,
entwining her arm
through mine,
her hand
resting on my wrist.

Between the rhythmic clacks
of the train
I inhaled
her perfume
wishing I was
whoever was in
her dream,
the man worthy
of being arm-in-arm
and receiving
her coos and moans,
not the one
who’d already pocketed
the phone
and rifled
her wallet.

I stood
to finally get off
at my stop
and she called me
Ray or Roy,
asked me
to come back to bed.

I stared at her,

wondered what
she was running from,
how many revolutions
would she make
before ending up
back home.

Scanning her phone,
I found Roy
at number two,
after mom,
left a message
for him
to come and get
his girl
before she
hurts herself
or someone else
does it for her.

I dropped the phone
back into her purse,
got off the train
and went home.

I fell asleep
staring at the ceiling
dreaming of gravity
and my face in the Sun.

bio: I live in Pennsylvania, usually write while listening to music and enjoy an occasional cigar outside on a star-filled night. A chapbook of poetry, "The Silence Brushes My Cheek Like Glass" can be read for free at scars.tv. A book of short horror stories, "The Spaces between Your Screams" was published in 2008. Details on all my writing can be found at www.chrishivner.com

Dylan Gerard Thompson- Poetry

A girl
Her black hair
Her dark Kali skin
Sitting with her inside a hut shelter
Watching the rain for a time in silence
Walking with her through the rainstorm
On a dirt road through green mystery life
I don't know any names
Nameless to each other still
Soaked to the skin
We both stare
The fire between us is
The reason her umbrella
Hasn't been opened yet

When you meet Bukowski
At a bar, kill him
When you see Ginsberg
At the coffee house, kill him
I'm not them
I don't need to know
How to write poetry
For you, for them
I've been doing it
Before I knew
What poetry was
That's what poetry is
Soul truth release
Never let a mouth tell you
How it's done


Cascade of yellow leaves under a tree
Spread out in interlocking repose
Painted into life
This is the real art we try to capture
Light green water towers trying to hide behind
Uncooperative late autumn trees loom over lake lands
Ancient carousel pony ornate frosting now rust
Staked into someones tiny front yard square
Overgrown in withered winter husks
A shape moves in the black rain
Floating through the night
I can see it clear as my own face
Across the road then gone
In the overexposed morning light
Cascade of red leaves under a row of trees




Dylan Gerard Thompson is an artist of words and images. Today he gets by selling his images and performing for the Rennaissance Faire. From a very young age he knew art was his calling and the only career he could be happy with. His goal in life is to make this his sole livelihood.  Recently his words were published in Electric Windmill Press and World Poetry Movement, his images in Electric Windmill Press, Station Hill Press, and Graffiti Kolkata. He just finished work on his first book titled VILE (forthcoming, Electric Windmill Press.) and a chapbook of his poetry and images. (forthcoming, Burning Apple Press) He has a showcase of some of his image work at http://swordofdoom.tumblr.com/ He's lived in Eagle River Alaska, Dun Laoghaire Ireland, and Medjugorje Bosnia & Herzegovina via charity work and back packing he currently resides in Ringwood New Jersey. He's a Outward Bound graduate and hopes to take a road trip across the United States someday soon.

Donal Mahoney- A Poem

Snapdragons Crackle

Snapdragons crackle

in the air for Maura

and her flowing gait, 

a swagger neither Nora

nor Maureen would ever

let a suitor savor.

Maura knows 

that in her wake

men with scythes

and burlap sacks,

creep like gators,

eyes afire, jaws agape.

Nora and Maureen

can smell these men.

Unlike Maura

and her flowing gait,

Nora and Maureen will smile,

take their time and wait.

------------------------------------------------------

The way young women (or mature women) walk has always been intriguing for most men. Before tattoos became an accessory almost as common as earrings, ladies who walked carefully were often quick to criticize ladies who did not. The problem is, some women have no governor to regulate their sway and unseemly admirers can sometimes be a problem.

Brian Le Lay- Three Poems

All the Good Health in the World

When we cored the globe like an apple
(Me with my semantics
You with your stupidity)
I wished you (not in so many words)
all the good health
in the world

My eyes rusted over,
My toenails turned the black of a penny

My lungs collapsed like carnival tents
on the foot-flattened grass of a vacant churchyard,
having given you all the good health
        in the world

I became a crumpled dollar bill,
The doctor fixed me up
a synthetic lung from the stray hair
you left hanging from the ceiling

    Real nice, real nice,
My relatives from Pennsylvania say
over au gratin potatoes, glass gravy boats,
Salt and pepper shakers in the shape
of buildings that are long gone.

"So will you ever graduate from Easy Street?"

There are many lost shoes that swing from powerlines,
Hanging mist and flashing lights between us,

But at least you are far

and that is enough.



Gerrymandering

Black
And white
Brown and blonde

The shades
And coarseness
Of skin
And hair

The stars in Williamsburg Brooklyn
Versus the stars
in Abingdon Virginia at midnight

Man and woman
Especially
Man and woman

The disparities keep us
Pushing and pulling
For progress

The Nuyorican Poets Cafe
On East 3rd and the Grand
Old Opry in Nashville

Samuel Beckett
And Glenn Beck
On the same shelf

Nature has played
A terrible trick
On us all



My Archimedean Restlessness

I've abandoned literature altogether
    and become a mathematician
I wake up in the middle of the night, naked,
stubbing my toe on an end-table
    while looking for a piece of paper

Next day, at lunch with my friends, I say,
"Sorry I'm late, was awake all night.
Got an idea for the most badass equation ever."



Brian Le Lay is the editor of Electric Windmill Press. He wrote the books Don’t Bury Me in New Jersey (Electric Windmill Books), Please Make an Internet Catchphrase Out of the Headline Written to Report My Death (forthcoming, Piggybank Bandit Books, 2011) and Our Brick-and-Mortar Basement Apartment America (Piggybank Bandit Books, 2012). His poems have most recently appeared in The Prism Review, The Montucky Review, and BoySlut.
 

Jason E. Hodges- Two Poems

 St. Dymphna

The cold wind now blows in the night
An image of St. Dymphna etched in silver hangs from my neck
It’s all that protects me now
For there’s not much comfort in the world when you can’t escape your mind
The once calm world I knew as a child has receded with the tides of life
Black clouds hang over the moon
Blocking out the last bit of light in this darkened sky
Draped with thickness, it refuses to shine
For things change place as time drifts by
The straitjacket has taken the place of my security blanket
Its warm comforting hugs get me through the night
The padded room is as soft as my childhood bassinet
And I pray
St. Dymphna, draw your sword, wrap your wings around me
For the dark storm blows in with a chill
It freezes me down to my bones
For the warning label under the RX number
Now seems as melodic to read as a nursery rime
The helmet is now a necessity
For you get no where beating your head against the wall
The wall of humanity or at least what they say humanity is
And the bottle with once life giving drink is now in the business of life taking gulps
Gulps of drunkenness sustain me
At times, the only way to make it through the loneliness in life
But with each drop, the bottle seems to steal away any hope I have left
Drinks of despair are turning the bottle up and realizing it’s empty
Then passing out to the warm buzz of the streetlight above me
And I pray
St. Dymphna, draw your sword, wrap your wings around me
For the cold wind still blows in the night

Teardrops Of The Soul

　
Teardrops of the soul fall in the most honest of ways
Plummet from your eyes with joy filled emotion
For, nothing that is true could ever be hidden
Hidden by a smile saying, all is what it must seem
Seem to the watching
The watching gaze that caged you for much too long
Locked you away from the happiness of having
For bars of stress are far worse than bars steel
But one day your lock was finally broken
Your tears cut through the strongest words from the chaining
Binding your spirit no more
For, teardrops of happiness drop with such beauty
Such strength
Falling diamonds from your eyes screaming with whispers of joy
Whispers of freedom shouting from your insides laying softly on your out
Like a shawl of the shoulders holding you warmly
Shaking your world with the slightest of ease
At last you see freedom in the new eyes that behold you
Dripping from the eye, yet streaming from your heart
Dripping to the pool of consciousness
Smashing the pools surface with the softest of weeps
For weeps of happiness have the power to pierce the hardest surface
Creating waves in your mirrored refection
Distorting the face looking back up at you
The waves will finally fall into ripples
Settled are these waters of change
Gentle is the reflection from the pool right below you
As your face comes into focus and your teardrops stop falling
You see the new you looking up from the water
A new life for the having has finally come
　




Bio for Jason E. Hodges

I began writing in 1989. Shortly after I began, I saw the movie Drugstore Cowboy with William S. Burroughs. After reading his books, I was hooked. I would go on to discover Charles Bukowski, Harry Crews, Anais Nin, and Anne Sexton. My most recent work can be found at The Fringe Magazine, The Camel Saloon, Indigo Rising Magazine, Raven Images, The Dirt Worker’s Journal, Daily Love, The Rainbow Rose, Dead Snakes, Books On Blog, The Second Hump, Poetic Medicine, Catapult To Mars, CrossTIME Science Fiction Anthologies Volumes 8, 9, and 10, as well as an article based on an interview I did with Harry Crews that appeared in Our Town Gainesville Edition, Spring 2011.

Devlin De La Chapa- A Poem

fatal love chase

radiator falters
the separation-
120 degrees

somewhere
in Texas,
a revolver spins

she wipes her nose
the hit is bad
tweaking hard

daylight breaks
thunder cracks the sky
blow melts the heat

from his hands
they glitter of gold
slugs plated of love

 

bio update:  DEVLIN DE LA CHAPA has been published here and there, and is scheduled to appear elsewhere.  She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has received an Editor's Choice at The Camel Saloon.  Devlin edits @ http://boyslut.wordpress.com.

Donal Mahoney- A Poem

 

The Grammar Years

 

On that train an hour ago,

I saw a teacher I had years ago

but he did not see me.

A proper man was he

 

who in the margins of my papers

wrote his sermons in a script

so perfect and so neat

they looked like samplers.

 

But on that train an hour ago

I glowed in exultation when I saw

his index finger curl and pluck

a small erratum from his nose.

 

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Decades ago, when tuition at a good university was $30 a credit hour, 

I stayed in graduate school in English because I hoped to become 

a writer. Then a professor told me that publishing fiction or poetry 

would not get me tenure. Instead I had to publish criticism of other 

people's work. Right then I quit because I knew I'd rather be carrion 

than the hyena that eats it.

Christopher Hivner- Two Poems

 

Medicine

 

I couldn’t give anyone

what they needed,

not in words

or with my hands.

No expression of my faith

gave them solace,

no encouragement

put the color

back in their eyes.

 

If I walked from here

to there and then back,

the stories I could tell

to strangers

gathered at my feet,

glassy-eyed and open-mouthed,

giving off the odor

of contempt

while licking the sweat

from my ginger skin.

 

The world reached out

across a sky

streaked with meteors,

blotted with comets

and debris,

satellites from the deep

coming home,

Klaxons blowing,

bells tolling,

bellwhethers bleating,

the world reached out

knowing the danger.

 

I walked from here

to there and stayed,

told no stories,

reached no conclusions.

The world

gathered at my feet

giving off the odor

of decomposition,

repeating prayers

with tongues

made from pages of the Bible.

 

When the sun rose,

a washed out blandishment

to the bleeding sky,

I still couldn’t give anyone

what they needed.

 

 

Any of Them

 

He spun the globe

with a tired finger.

 

Something broke

in the background.

 

The countries blurred together

in a miasma of ink and imaginary lines.

 

Glass covered the kitchen floor,

and protruded from a child’s foot.

 

His hand hovered over the globe,

deciding when to descend.

 

Screaming filled the house like water

while the mother tried to soothe.

 

He stopped the globe, Burkina Faso,

spun it again.

 

The glass came out,

cleanup began.

 

The globe slid under his finger,

South Bend, Indiana.

 

The mother is shouting his name

to come and help with the children.

 

He spun it so hard,

the blue and white sphere wobbled on its axis.

 

Mother shouting at him, pleading with the children,

children shouting at one another, pleading with him.

 

His index finger jabbed violently,

southern Portugal shuddered.

 

The injured child is running with fear,

trailing blood through the house.

 

His eyes cross painfully

watching the globe spin and spin.

 

“Why won’t you help me?

Why are you just sitting there?”

 

Fictional borders disappear

into the greedy oceans.

 

Why is the TV on when no one is watching it,

why must the kids scream every word they say?

 

He doesn’t stop it this time,

letting it choose for him.

 

The din becomes a hum

becomes an epoxy in the folds of his brain.

 

It stops under his pointing finger,

northern Pennsylvania, home.

 

Where did the quiet come from,

and why is it building in his ears?

 

He was pointing to his own house,

to his own beating heart.

 

He could feel them around him,

their voices fighting to get in.

 

He ended

where he started.

Jason E. Hodges- A Poem

Black Magnolias

When a child is raised in nothing but darkness
Adulthood is cast in a constant eclipse
Darkness in the form of ridicule
This is one of the greatest sins on earth
Far greater than the seven that were laid out so long ago
For after this sin is committed
Everything that stands before them lies in ash covered memories
Living the rest of their life on the edge of existence
Diet pills take the place of what once was mother’s milk
A mother who set impossible standards of weight for what a young lady should be
That was incapable of hearing the words that she spoke so easily
For the bulimic ballerina bows beautify before the crowd
Accepting their cheers of approval
For not only her graceful flow of melodic dance movement
But her rail thin appearance
An angel is what she believes the crowd sees in her mind
Then backstage she shudders in shame as she undresses in front of the mirror
She knows what the refection will say
Its whispers of death scream in her mind, “One more laxative and all will be fine.”
Self-induced retching seems to bring to the surface all that needs to come out
Physical and mental
Both come deep from within
For everything’s a crutch, but the crutch can sometimes give way
Give way to a free fall of doubt
A free fall of the world that surrounds the ballerina
A world scarred by demons of the past
But now it’s show time
No time for worry
Exhaustively thin the ballerina twirls into her performance
Her pail skin stretched over her bones
Sparkle with glitter under the burning stage lights
Dizzy but still dancing for the show must go on even at the cost of her life

David Pointer- A Poem

Bootstrappin’

Shaking hands with

the technological

talons attached to

the military industrial

complex—you’ve

got a spinal column

forged on project

bricks-the Presidency

seems out of reach

even though teachers

told you otherwise,

but platoon 1057

has a place for you,

and upon  return

upwardly mobile

society does not

Bio: David S. Pointer was the son of a piano playing bank robber who passed away when David was 3 years old. David would later serve in the Marine military police. He has been publishing poems in the small press for 21 years.

Donal Mahoney- A Poem

 

Shoppers in Melee 

State and Madison, Chicago. 

Saturday, high noon.

Shoppers in melee.

Surrounded, I give up.

Against the curb, I see

suddenly the sea foam up

and in the distance

white birds soar and glide,

black apostrophes

cleaver split

but still tangential,

rising, falling.

Then the stoplight

flashes green and I

prepare to sally off

till I look down

and see against

the curb the great

white waters bowl

as one by one people

drop and drown.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Donal Mahoney remembers in this poem the first time he took the bus downtown from his little neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. He wanted to see the sights at Christmas time. At 14, he was simply overwhelmed by the crowds amassed on all four corners of State and Madison, an intersection he still sees quite frequently, many decades later, if only in his mind. St. Louis, home of the world champion baseball Cardinals, and his home now, is a nice city but it has no intersection quite like State and Madison in Chicago any day of the year.