Gene McCormick- Art

                                                              Paris Rooftops I

                                                               Paris Rooftops II

                                                              Paris Rooftops III



Gene McCormick is a writer who paints without preference for either discipline.  His art is in private and commercial collections and he has illustrated a number of books.  He is the illustrator for Misfitmagazine.net.

Rose Mary Boehm- Three Poems

Another Mermaid Story

A small, brown village
on the Cornish coast.
Ruby married Fred.
She’d had enough of filing
in the ‘Museum for Fishing and Smuggling’.
Fred liked Ruby because she was round
and sleek as a seal.

A slight scent of ocean
hovered over her skin.

Ravenous triplets sucked her dry.
In the supermarket she pushed
a tank with three activated
missiles from aisle to aisle.

Ruby soon neglected them.
Preferred to watch
the silvery catches
in the harbour.

Fred hired a nanny. Took to her.
Ruby took to the fishermen.
Both grew into the comfortable
co-existence of mutual dislike.

Ruby disappeared.
Fred drank her health.
In the bar that night a fisherman
mentioned that he’d seen a selky
swim out into the Celtic Sea.

Bye, Mum

You took off, left behind your memories.

My brain’s gone off orbit.

Know what? As far as memories go

I like yours better.

Sitting on a pile of clothes; can’t find my socks.

Do you know what drugs do to your self?

Know what? As far as selves go

I like yours better.

The big empty house lives, whispers and threatens.

When I needed you, you lived your life, selfish cow.

Know what? As far as lives go

I like yours better.

It’s alright now. No it’s not.
You took off. And so did I.

Know what? As far as takeoffs go

I like yours better.

There was a time when it no longer hurt.

You took your CDs.

Know what? As far as music goes

I like yours better.

In the mornings the blue spiders of the early hours

crawl over me.

And it’s all over now.

Know what? As far as endings go,

I like mine better.

(first published in my poetry collection 'Tangents', 2010/11, UK)

clandestine

meet me at the old

victoria station hotel

make it eleven.

hookers, lovers, trains

pass sooty windows

don’t bring luggage

just remember

how I loved you

last winter in Antwerp.

your wet skin reflects

the almost light

under these high ceilings,

bent venetian blinds hide

curtains torn by time,

the station clock

has no mercy.



A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection published in 2011 in the UK, ‘TANGENTS’, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a good two dozen US poetry reviews as well as some print anthologies, and Diane Lockward’s The Crafty Poet. She won third price in in the 2009 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse (US), and has been a finalist in several GR contests, winning it in October 2014. 

Donal Mahoney- Three Poems

Thousand-Legger at Midnight

I rise to pee at midnight

and it’s nice to see 

no gunman in the bathroom 

waiting to shoot me

but there’s a thousand-legger,

a centipede, if you will,

in the tub, disoriented 

by the light

walking in circles

like an unhappy cat.  

He’s obviously upset 

he can’t escape the tub

because of the high walls.

A mystery how he got there.

The walls won’t let him go 

where life might dictate.

Now that autumn’s here, 

maybe he’s come to visit

or maybe spend the winter.

He doesn’t know it but 

he won’t survive my wife

well known to other insects,

now deceased, as Big Foot. 

Every once in awhile 

he tries to crawl the wall 

but falls to the floor again, 

the longest centipede

I’ve ever seen, a caboose

suddenly left behind, 

deserted on a railroad track,  

going nowhere till my wife 

applies her heel. 

On Tippy Toes

On tippy toes 

with arms outstretched

my grandson asks 

how old are you

and so I tell him 

I'm sooooo old 

that when I stretch 

my arms like his

to exercise them

vultures land and

caucus there.

My grandson says

he puts his arms out 

so robins will build 

nests on them

and raise their chicks. 

He never takes a nap 

because he has to keep

his eyes on the clouds

to shoo away hawks 

circling for supper.

Gramps Is Still Nuts about Granny

Granny wants to go to a movie 

back in the old neighborhood 

where she and Gramps used to

neck in high school but Gramps 

doesn't want to drive that far  

and tells Granny he’ll go if she sits 

in the balcony and wears a skirt 

he can slide his hand under 

during the Coming Attractions.

Granny asks Gramps if he isn’t 

a little old for that kind of thing  

and Gramps says he’d rather put 

his head under there and let Granny 

box his ears with her thighs 

and listen to his sighs as he harvests 

fruit still ripe in the orchard.

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Alan Catlin- Three Poems

After the Closing of the Dime Museum & Flea Circus

“If you’ve ever talked to somebody

with two heads you know they know

something you don’t.” Diane Arbus

Underwater lights in over chlorinated

indoor pool give off a toxic light,

graygreen and shimmering, surreal as

the party goers sipping drinks from

plastic cups: high balls and fruit punches

with tiny umbrellas, mimosas colored red

as a Hawaiian Sunset, long neck beers,

some with straws for better access,

drinking all the way down to the end.

Function sign outside the pool room,

the thick-with-condensation sliding glass

double doors, says “Welcome Freaks”,

they who are gathered here one last time

after closing of last Flea Circus on the circuit;

all those sideshow attractions: bearded ladies,

one trick pony dwarf albinos, sword swallowers

and fire eaters, armless twins, deformants all,

medical curiosities and their touts, all unwanted

and unemployed, dressed in their costumes

one final time; their glitter and their glow

in the harsh, damaged light.

The Last Drop

Barroom misted Prussian blue,

toxic with smoke, substances

that are legal and those that are

not.  Hate rock tunes on the juke,

full contact, no rules, Ultimate

Fighting machines on flat screen

TV’s, big money riding on the

outcome of the match between

body art model skinhead versus

the wild black man with dyed

purple/green Mohawked hair;

the kind of blood sport that leaves

splatters on the barroom wall,

barely visible on layered grime,

years of viscera, layered slime

already encrusted there. So densely

packed in here everyone is moving

standing still. Sweat stains the bar top

yellow and everyone is breathing

the same canned heat, released.

All the emergency doors are locked,

alarm bells muted as the ultimate

fight goes on. The room so tense

and tight, you wonder what will set

it off. You wonder when.

Time

Lives spent in crosshairs of

night vision scopes, souls

mortally wounded, body and

brain soon to follow. Faces of

dead people you might have

known frozen as cameos

in fossilized eyes of stuffed

creatures, wild cats and deer,

antelopes and steers, horror show

galleries wax museum figures

gain admittance to see, paying

double to watch ghosts walk as

humans.  Time out of mind,

at railway’s end, electric cars

derailed, spewing sparks like

tracer rounds, one mad minute

after the next.  Nowhere to go

someone isn’t watching. Glow

worms crawling ceilings, illuminating

walls, caterpillars carpeting floors.

Every day like this.

How long can it go on?

Sy Roth- A Poem

A Picture in the Garden Book of Zion

Midway life’s journey I was made aware

That I had strayed into a dark forest,

And the right path appeared not anywhere.

Ah, tongue cannot describe how it oppressed,

This wood, so harsh dismal and wild, that fear

At thought of it strikes now into my breast.

Dante—Canto I—Inferno

Part I--When Real

discarded clothing warms the torpid ground

gelatinous figures stretched thin along the margins

hunger for their share.

frightened youth,

cap pulled tight to his eyebrows

shuts out reality

but can just see the whispering woman

mouthing words through her twitching lips.

stripped to camisole,

her being waits among the clutter they will leave

she, stooped vermin,

restive among the heaps of other vermin

their harbinger eyes ablaze in their just spring--

hands outstretched to hold back the sky,

that trembles.

dark visages for an inky Charon voyage

greet a netherworld wrapped in their silence.

others wait behind in sweaty clumps,

millenniums of them

twitching to the nearby, staccato pings

final authoring of a hopeful resurrection.

wrap themselves in prayer shawls

camel-ride into their sunset

arbeit set to the rhythm of the next burst of a

mysterious chorus on a Glenn Miller afternoon,

she, fearful that her touch would sear the child.

Part II When Shadows Fall

sweat of lambs

baaing.

bowing bleat of their mournful tunes

a Shema-marching horde

fades in the morass of sputtering prayers,

pitter-patter of a million small feet

goose-stepping to a raucous kettle drum

Wagnerian caterwauling adrift in the air,

gasps at the reality of their dawning---

interrogative hands stretch against the darkling sky

whispered curses whipped by an unruly wind,

pigeon-holed to their silent god.

Part III When Fiction

the galleries at the forest’s edge are filled with them

Silent watchers

a Chthonic monster chorus.

booty beckons

cursing the existence of the others

and their uplifted arms

and their frozen white bodies.

they titter in anticipation--

blast them all to hell for making them spelunkers-

beating their rat-a-tat drum solo.

deed done,

noisy crescendo melts them into the ground

shatters the silence of death

rapine, they pillage through the piles

hands drawn like hands in death rictus

scratching at the ground and the warm clothing.

smash their ears silent

against their own puffing wind.

Part IV Extinction

a sirocco of silence descends--

skritching cockroaches abide

in the refuse heaped

where booty a sea of velvet

litters the verdant fields.

the Valkyries,

restless ants,

cigarette smoke curling,

they waiting for the next picture

to be taken

seventh ring sealed.

Paul Tristram- Three Poems

  

The Azure Lure

For Fourteen long years now
he has watched the changing
Seasons come and go
through a Prison Cell Window.
The Azure Skies of Summer
Torment him the most,
it is then that he feels
his Damned Soul cry inside.
‘There is just so much to do
out there, so much to see,
so much to Feel and Experience.
But never for me, no more!
Instead I let a Different
kind of Azure Lure me
into a Violent, Murderous Trap
of Betrayal, Revenge and Cruelty.
All that I Achieved in the End
was to Free Her from Madness
whilst Condemning Myself,
Completely, to a Life Wasted’

© Paul Tristram 2014

The Dance Of The Tarantula

Under sour milk moon and shivering stars
she descends the silky, sticky cobwebbed ladder
with beady little narcissistic eyes
aglow with mischief and murder.
Stepping down with a slow swagger
onto the windowsill terra firma
and delightedly crushes across the carpet
of empty husks and shell skeletons.
Made from wonderful ex-victims,
bluebottles, houseflies, butterflies and moths
all now deliciously drained and digested.
A joyous graveyard of limbs and wings
fracturing and dusting to bits and pieces
beneath her delicate yet authoritative size 8’s.
She twirls in a giddy trance of evil euphoria
for a delightful minute or two,
exhilarated by the snap, crackle and pop
emanating from the carnage below her.
Then after building up a torturous appetite
she starts scaling upwards
into the deep, morbid shadows once more.
Towards the upside down, partially fluttering,
begging, desperate, tasty morsel
bound, gagged and awaiting vampiric surgery.

© Paul Tristram 2014

The Libertine’s Little Black Book

Tumbled out of his sleazy overcoat pocket
one dark, damp Winter’s night
and lay there waiting and glowing in mischief.
The next morning a Nun named Chastity
stumbled upon it by the fountain in the market square
where it called out in a throbbing half-silence.
It was wearing an old cracked, fleshy type cover
and as she stooped to pick it up
a dark coldness seeped into her gentle fingertips
and started swarming up both of her arms.
Her once serene head instantly filled to the brim
with crying, screaming and bestial moaning,
whilst nostrils and taste buds flooded and swamped
with alcohol, smoke and many other unfamiliar
shades of foul, unpleasant wickedness.
Her soul started wretching and coming loose
from its fixings until she threw back down the book
to the ground with a ‘God Almighty’
and all the Angelic Faith she could muster.
She cringingly shook the darkness back out
from her fingertips as she hurriedly ran away,
leaving the laughing book to await
a less challenging route back home to its Master.

© Paul Tristram 2014



Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories, sketches and photography published in many publications around the world, he yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight, this too may pass, yet.
 
You can read his poems and stories here! http://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/

Richard Schnap- A Poem

CONSCRIPTION

He strides past as if he’s possessed
By the ghost of a soldier marching to battle
In an endless war against himself

Unsmiling and silent, eyes on the ground,
Hunting an enemy he’s pursued so long
He can barely remember his name

But once I saw him holding hands
With a pretty girl, laughing together,
As if a ceasefire had been declared

That seemed to end just as it began
Leaving him to wait for his next order
In the no-man’s-land of his ravaged heart

Ayaz Daryl Nielsen- Three Poems

inner-city slum, the relaxed dive

consciences hibernate there

the fumes of cigarettes, booze and meth,

dried sweat-stink, grease-stained blankets

homeless misfits with measured oblivions

their hunger abiding in all dimensions

punctuated only by upheaval and

sometimes, you know, I miss it

yesterday, fucked up

today, fucking up again

tomorrow, well, probably

extra-special fuck-ups

and all of them,

it seems, in tune

small spider bite

moves me out of grim conceits 

and back into this day

ayaz daryl nielsen, husband, father, veteran, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs)/hospice nurse, editor of bear creek haiku (25+ years/120+ issues), homes include Lilliput Review, Jellyfish Whispers, Boston Literary Magazine, Dead Snakes, Shamrock, and! bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com (translates as joie de vivre)

Jennifer Lagier- Three Poems & Photos

 

 

 

 

Redwood Retreat

Cazadero, September 2014

 

Precarious dirt road

ploughs uphill to sunset ridge

past buckeyes and redwoods

overlooking dry river.

 

Sequoia sentinels

drag feathery limbs

through morning mist

as it hangs above canyon.

 

Tough skinned survivors

stretch skyward from

mosaic forest mulch,

cloak a fairytale cabin.

 

Stellar jays screech

insults to common crows,

whet their beaks

upon fallen pine cones.

 

I sip coffee, wrestle images,

invoke imperfect poetry,

explore every what if

from this tiny oak table.

 

 

 

 

Still Life

 

"Not love, not the wind, not the inside of stone."    ~ Mary Oliver

 

Sleepy bohemian village is beginning to waken:

tourists at tables, scent of coffee, toasted cinnamon bagels.

Fall garlands, faux goblins and ghosts, mingle with pumpkins.

Witchy Halloween dioramas decorate store fronts.

 

Curiosity pulls me along haunted streets,

down enchanted trail past rusty leaf drifts,

toward intersection of estuary and ocean.

Spectral light suffuses transient beach strand.

 

Sunrise sucks ephemeral mist from blanketed bay,

bares lavender fog banks, gilded fairytale headlands,

conjures dour ravens speaking in tongues,

the one-legged sea gull who circles for handouts.

 

 

 

 

Breach

 

The sea boils with a combination

of brown kelp and anchovies.

 

Terns fling themselves from gray sky, belly flop

like clowns, disappear under wave spume.

 

Lacy umbrellas erupt across agitated bay.

Breaching whales spout just off shoreline.

 

Wherever birds congregate, misty blow follows.

Behemoth flukes rip apart silver spindrift.

 

This is a prehistoric flashback: raw, watery

planet that teems with magnificent monsters.

Jennifer Lagier is an unrepentant snake follower.

Donal Mahoney- A Poem

Let’s Solve These Problems, America!

The poor are hungry in America.

Their numbers would fill stadiums 

throughout this prosperous land.

And feral cats are running wild,

eating songbirds in our yards,

plucking koi from garden ponds.

What can Americans do?

We can trap those feral cats,

knock them on the noggin, skin 

and marinade them overnight, 

barbecue them in the morning,

visit homeless camps

and invite the poor to stadiums 

across America to feast at halftime. 

Let them eat and give them traps 

to catch their own feral cats

and become self-sustaining.  

Next, to solve the problem of Ebola 

we can make Liberia the 51st state,

send food stamps to our new citizens 

and enroll them in Obamacare. 

There’s room in Texas should

they decide to emigrate. 

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Janne Karlsson- Cartoon

"Pouring," written by Wolfgang Carstens and illustrated by Janne Karlsson.

The collaboration between Wolfgang Carstens and Janne Karlsson is a match made in hell. In only one year these insanely productive motherfuckers have created more madness than most people do in a lifetime. Their book "Enjoy Oblivion" is available through Concrete Meat Press and their next upcoming missile "The Stench of Failure" will be out in 2015 on Epic Rites Press.
 
Meanwhile, check these bastards out at www.boommotherfuckers.com or www.thestenchoffailure.com

Ryan Sparks- A Poem

Untitled

Drunk poetry is bitter sweet.
Within the first sips,
you find your spirits lifted,
giggling silently to yourself as you
                                         drift away.
From the worries. From the pain.

Past the bottle neck, we reach the heart of your problems.
The thoughts of her flood your mind
as your kidneys work overtime.
You can't seem to let go as the bottle slips past your lips once again.
You find comfort in the hollow warmth,
recalling how it felt to hold her.
Bodies snug together.

A tight grip helps to steady the emotion flood.
You just can't seem to
                       let go
as the rest of you revisits April,
when you still felt alive....

And as the bottle dries with the final drops,
the tears start flowing

Robert Demaree- Poetry

TANKA DIARY: 2009—2014

June 2009:

I-81 north:

Old guys with Florida plates,

Bound for New England

Maybe the Adirondacks,

Perhaps the Thousand Islands

January 2010

January day:

Leafless trees against blue sky;

Birds crowd the feeder,

Goldfinches in winter garb,

Muted Eddie Bauer green.

July 2012

Foggy summer day,

Cannot see the Isles of Shoals.

Walk on gravel beach,

Cairns silhouetted in mist.

I add a rock to the pile.

August 2013

Stopped at the border,

Into Maine from New Brunswick,

We have been profiled:

Senior citizens suspect,

Contraband prescription drugs.

October 2014

Sugar maple, oak,

Umber in the gray-white mist:

October foliage,

As though light shown from within:

Quiet New Hampshire morning

THE MORNING OF THE SANDWICH FAIR

It is the morning of the Sandwich Fair.

Summer people come back to New Hampshire in October:

A giddy sense of trespass

Where the tangents of everyday lives touch, briefly.

We are sharers of space, of holy ground,

Eavesdroppers, bound by the accident of juxtaposition,

By random consecutiveness.

At the craft shop mothers with children of different ages

Mill about. The women order wedding presents

With a certain vacant self-absorption.

The children have opted out of the pewtersmith’s tour;

They careen around the shop, handling the merchandise

And each other: home schoolers on an outing, we conclude.

At the restaurant four classmates,

Over fifty but not quite our age,

Critique a class reunion.

They lament poor attendance at the dinner,

The choice of entree, time’s unkindness.

We drive on, regarding each maple, each sumac

As though leaves might not turn again.

At the Sandwich Fair Amanda Glidden awaits the pony pulling,

Her sheep judged runners up to best of show.

“The Morning of the Sandwich Fair” appeared in the 2010 Poets’ Guide to New Hampshire

Robert Demaree is the author of three book-length collections of poems, including After Labor Day, published in April 2014 by Beech River Books.  In 2013 his poems received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the  Burlington Writers Club He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, where he lives four months of the year. His poems have appeared in 150 periodicals. For further information see http://www.demareepoetry.blogspot.com