B.Z. Niditch- Three Poems

UPROOTED

Uprooted by first light
in the Green Mountains
by mushrooming
pockets of dreams
yet redeemed by sunshine
on blankets of snow
of stolen nights and dawns
wearing animal skins
amid a stunning sun
in a collapsing coat
and carefree hood,
trying my hand
at a play about Whitman
with blue-penciled verse
now featured in photos
taken by a distant mutineer
with his St. Bernard
and my recusant energy
cold shouldered for now
up for a ski jaunt.



LIVE CHAT

Bruised conversation
on a local T.V.talk show
of this poet years ago
on a stolen spring dawn
in his polished boots
among camera lights
a heavy silence
of reverie takes me over
mesmerized by camera
with Laddie his sheepdog
having his media debut,
I take out my early collection
of poems, "Freedom Trails"
about revolutionary Boston
and speak, sigh free
hopefully grounded
by questions and answer.



LIGHT IN THE DARKROOM

In a void
from cabin fever
unable to venture out
and seeing the green fir trees
among the shadow
of pure white drifts of snow
hiding my body
disclosing my eyes
like a forest brown bear
hibernating by a mirror
a poet in a faithful minimalism
of animal magnetism
trying to save the earth
and the overflowing oceans
from man's pollution
while hardly saving myself
from a child's confidential time
as my shadow stretches
for a once mile run,
it seems like a miracle
just to eye the sun
from my absent green eyes
against the seasonal pull
pleading for any harbinger
like a Canadian robin
on my dark corner sill
where a few geraniums
still survive
in my sound proof studio
aching for first light
of spring to take a picture
of bird watchers or ice fishermen
at the slippery edge of the dock.

Donal Mahoney- Three Poems

Waiting in Hospice

This time why
doesn’t matter
all that matters is

what and when
it’s finally over
he'll know

who was right
the last time
he saw them

at the wake
20 years ago
his big sister

the atheist
his little brother
the monk



The Canyon Dwellers

There’s this canyon
between two cliffs
and Tim Boyd has a foot
planted on each cliff.
He’s spread-eagled
but very steady.

He's been stretched
over the canyon since
he got back from Iraq.
After he took his position,
he thought someone
would eventually look up.

There are others
spread over the canyon
in front of Tim.
They’ve been there
since Viet Nam and
getting a bit wobbly.

In back of Tim
are the new arrivals
spread-eagled as well.
They’re fresh from
Afghanistan and they're
getting their feet set.

The rest of us below
have jobs and are busy
with families and lives.
When a canyon dweller falls
and makes a terrible mess,
we find the time to look up.



Swirls

Professor Burns is interested
in macro issues only,
no minutiae for him.

So he asks students
on the first day of class why
water swirls counterclockwise

when you flush a toilet
anywhere in America
and to determine as well

by midterm if the water swirls
clockwise elsewhere in the world.
Or if the counterclockwise swirl

is uniform all over the planet.
Extra credit will be given
to the student who proves

the counterclockwise swirl is
a conspiracy of plumbers.
The final exam, he says, is

an essay question asking if ISIS
will reverse the swirl clockwise
when it takes over the world.



Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. 

John Swain- Three Poems

A Throwing Veil

After fishing the beach

the eagle turns to light

behind the pines

like a bright sun to the west

chased by crows.

I put my face

to the darkening waves

beginning to rain

in consummation.

I see you naked,

the black mist lifts

a fragrant throwing veil.

The Angle of List

Thunderhead storm winds build in the evening

as the sea of lightning shakes a gull bone rattle,

the waves break in white spray trailing.

Ring of vision

with the grey sky and waves prostrate

as the osprey cries your brother of the Atlantic.

I dissolve in the salt like the pillar of a woman

seeing angels

swim with the ships ripping their sails.

Origin of our source this dark migration route

extends the horizon

from body to body, face to face, hand in hand.

Then the severing overwhelms

the myth of contentment, the myth of oneness,

and we continue the angle of list.

Sea Island

The sea island bells

for the fog in the harbor

dredged onto barges.

Caroline, your twin,

Susannah has gone

back to the mountains.

I loved in a misuse,

I took my confession

from the ghost on the water.

A still quiets the bells

like a name vanishes

with the childless.

Black oaks hold

the world submerged

in the grey dawn.

John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Red Paint Hill published his collection, Ring the Sycamore Sky.  

Stefanie Bennett- Three Poems

HARD WORK 

The last conversation
I had
With a fossil
Escapes me –.

It’s either or
Neither
Of us
Being known

To the other
That
Counts as
A bit

Of a bother.



SCOPE 

Late in the day,
And slightly
Humped over

My shoulder
Suggests
... If I am

Of whale descent

Words
Are
Water –.



SEMINAL BELIEF

Inside nothing and beyond
The brink
                 I find
An unpaid
Promissory note
That said

You’d return around
The time
The rains
                Came:

They’re here...

Matt Margo- Two Poems

bombshell vocations

at the nightclub dances
the prettiest matter
across a summit of storms

a modish windmill at the diehard café
taming waves and riding tight corners
in an underground room
on a wordless night still transient

like ghost hands over heavens
hammering out an age
of permanence or fence
sustained in isolation

let me push this trial and at once
kowtow to these arabian cascades
and sidewalk muses
for their large-scale wisdom
told after the heavy rains

against a backdrop
the monuments glisten
with light spring rain

the hands rise over a snowstorm
loftily living and blooming
safe from harm in a simplified city
rasping into a saw-like slip

of vintage wear and leisure time
cloaked in ameliorated cleanliness
they echo oral accounts of love said aloud
forbidding any unexpected fish farm frost

yapping about quick friendship
and the slow dark moon
vultures speak in heated murmurs
their lowly souls with salty patches
into slow synthetic synthesis

the old adage is nothing more
than a true hope shudder
bluish flags treading water

bliss is not fixed in passing canisters
of gin or the sap of the sin
that came to humanity
in punctured lines

chiming of different times
at a monday morning’s rally
the comedians and magicians
come together in search of footprints

as they move on
they recite their own songs
clacking and passing jars
to make ready
for the revolution of thorns


do-it-yourself make-a-wish foundation

to whom it may not concern:
it concerns me
and that is that
if your hand is as big as your face
it means that you have cancer
and if you ask me to marry you
then the answer is yes
yes i am an ugly human being
yes i do have a heart

Both poems published in Metazen November 2012



Matt Margo is the author of the poetry chapbook what i would say (Peanut Gallery Press, 2014) and the book-length poem When Empurpled: An Elegy (Pteron Press, 2013) as well as the editor of the online poetry magazine Zoomoozophone Review and the literary blog experiential-experimental-literature.

Adreyo Sen- A Poem

On a Rainy Day

On days when the sky is a wall of rain,
you find the nearest window seat
to curl up on.

Perhaps in those moments
you are thinking of a little house
and a little school
and a boy who loved to hold you
in his arms.

There are days when it rains
both here and where you are
and on those days you must
kiss the glass
as you used to kiss me.

For in those moments
when the rain curtains you and me,
there will be no glass between us,
no oceans raging and deep.

And you'll be warm
with all the love in my smile.

Noel Negele- Two Poems

Some More Bad Poetry.

We were on that Mercedes-Benz Sprinter truck again

All three of us, next to each other

The driver already on his third coffee

My brother leaning his bald head against the window

Trying to grasp some minutes of sleep

And behind his bald head

An ugly city gave away to viridity

 

I was on my fifth sober day

And it was the little things that broke me inside

Like say

The alarm clock at 6 in the morning,

The potholes in the streets,

the morning faces,

the beeping sound each time

I started the car in the morning

Indicating the perennial lack of petrol

or when we all loaded the equipment

on the truck

silently and synchronized

and it was the history of repetition that this fact

verified

that drove me mad

 

We went to a suburban nursery school on that day

Because the prime minister had a speech there

And we began to assemble the cameras

And the jimmy jib triangle crane

on their proper places

and it was a difficult task to keep yourself

from having a fit

when there’re so many kids around

and they had clowns too

and one of them had a fat gut

which made me feel good about myself

and realize

there’s always worse

 

But the kids were curious

About the cameras and the crane

About everything

And I had a bladder issue

And the coffee was awful

And I was trying to maintain a mental balance

In a sea of frenzy children

But the only way of managing

Was to push them away

Without manners:

“ Just fuck off to the clowns over there!”

 

At some point I went to the truck

To grab a piece of machinery

And while returning

I stopped in front of a closed door

And started smoking,

 

Half way on my cigarette

The door opened

And an ugly lady exited

Not quite closing the door behind her

Leaving a small gap

 

And through that small gap

I saw an impeccable flower

And it’s not a good thing

To see such a beautiful woman

Without being prepared

Because impulses begin to stem

And you’re suddenly

On the verge of doing something

really stupid that will get you in a lot of trouble

 

Of course she didn’t care to look at me twice

And of course I was thinking about her for weeks

Until the next equally indifferent flower

Would take her place in my mind

 

And when the prime minister came

And told all that bullshit they want to hear

All of them

Children and adults

And her

Looked at the prime minister

Actually listening

Actually expecting

And the only ones who didn’t care

Was me

And

That fat clown

 

And I could see it

In his face

 

He wanted a drink

As badly

As I did.

In The End Very Little To Nothing Is Left.

She showed me some letters I had once written to her

from years of which I remember nothing,

and I read those letters under her examining eyes

words of crying and groaning

loaded with what the writer once thought as essence

and I was amazed by the writer's certainty of his love

back when us seemed like an unbreachable fortress

back to now

where all the words of love seemed so terribly empty.

John Pursch- Three Poems

Boiled to Starlight

 

Hefty paparazzi double cork

caboodle canker sores

to postulate in tertiary eaves

till drooping dorsal enmity

revisits homespun tendencies

of paltry banter sidecar kicks

and studio retracement.

 

He slopped his shoveled platitudes

down someone else’s scuppered earwig

for enlightened changeling portents,

slipped to mundane café stools

of hardback tachyon survivors,

mauled by preferential drones.

 

She lagged at his piebald slouch,

bot peeler mentality,

simian caseload exigencies

of spurting chromatic thrusts,

and looped till perilously sure

of exhortation rights in lucid

ambit’s prehistoric flax;

 

all in perpetrated bowers

of harbored flea repugnance,

boiled to starlight pegs before

invigorated calves could crave

another mighty hit of ropey

umpteen schooner fizz.

 

Oars lift foghorn retinues

to ancient briny whistle-stops

of tourist grime embargo holes

and dime store truculence

for catered helicopter sheep.

 

We feel rotating thuds

of ammunition dawdle by,

plopping in timed faults of birdshot,

singing trafficked overload in keyed

occurrence amputation.

 

Emblematic Frost

 

Slim vertebrae chunk

transvestite auctions

into piecewise vertical boxcars,

raising furtive galoshes

from shin-deep crepe saddles.

 

Pirouettes deploy

purloined measles

to comfort a barricaded hog,

spilling ordinary optics

across the grazing terrapin’s

statutory zeal.

 

Dacron toasters

cover embattled hostages

with celestial chemise,

touching on tresses

that shoulder cradles

for caterpillars.

 

Oomph begets

decanted mountains

in spewn syllabic syllabi,

morphing syncopated chattel’s

bumpy rationed symptoms,

spotting a disheveled turtle

crossing tunneled sequins.

 

Swallowing away,

footfalls plunge

against the gloaming triad,

plying semicolon flesh,

slurped aloft in tethered hands.

 

Subways whip the bylaw dusk

to Cornish bowler features,

shoveled into loosened

emblematic frost.

Smithereens of Aging

 

I hear bespectacled spackle merchants

singing on yodeling expeditions

for brotherly cloakroom autism,

counting down from pilloried nerds

in testy pestilence and stooping

sandwich tripwire moss sitars,

strung vibrantly to

schooner cabin ziggurats

in perspicacious whimsy.

 

She’s leafing carelessly along

an aisle of cheetah squares,

bling cones dangling for

trendy showpiece maple taps

beneath the blackened smithereens

of aging swirls in shallow core venison,

cruelly blogging circumstantially

in swine machinery’s cultish craze

confetti armadillo berth.

 

Hordes of pothole plungers

pilfer tarnation from scarab ants

in scruffy exhibitionist keyhole plaque,

ground delicately to

trusted meatball carrion whiz

by elven vase inhabitants

from drawing tomb synagogues

near sauteed Mylar breasts

of scaly votive Scotsmen.

John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and has appeared in many literary journals. A collection of his poetry, Intunesia, is available at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks. Check out his experimental lit-rap video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33aUs7obVc. He’s @johnpursch on Twitter and john.pursch on Facebook.

Douglas Polk- Three Poems

Impeachment

Nixon cared for the country,
and resigned,
Clinton did not,
Impeachment,
now an empty bluff,
Obama willing to gamble America's future,
the same as Bush,
the second,
willingly squandered treasury and lives in the desert sand,
socialists in the senate,
and narcissists everywhere one looks,
the poor no longer people,
but political pawns,
health insurance no longer insurance,
but another ponzi scam,
banking and betting lives instead of money,
the government and insurance companies,
playing with house money,
while the rest of us,
play Russian roulette,
many praying for a bullet,
instead of a protracted death,
and an empty chamber,
payback a bitch,
as Valerie Jarrett said,
race issues erupt,
in this time of hate,
paint the skin either brown or black,
to hide the target,
on the white man's back,
police departments destroyed,
under the attorney general's watch,
threatened again and again,
by Holder's black skinned thugs,
intimidating the whiter races,
ironically Obama and Holder,
both raised away from the hood,
bilingual,
they learned how to talk,
both white,
and black,
liars in more than one language,
impeachment such a empty threat.

Racism in America

Ferguson only an excuse to stoke the rage,
change not truly wanted,
responsibilities could then be demanded,
respect the community,
and obey the law,
the anger misplaced,
blame assessed unjustly,
mainly out of need,
without the white racist,
one must look in the mirror,
and confront the answers lurking there,
much easier,
if Ferguson an excuse,
to stoke the rage.

Foreign Policy

beheadings and crucifixions,
the fires flame,
an orange morning sky,
the world burning,
no hoses in sight,
a dark age lurks,
the sands of the Mideast caked in blood.

Kira Gray- Two Poems

Beer Eyes

A man's man
my uncle John
worked construction
traveled state to state
wherever the work was
all week
pouring concrete
making roads, bridges, tunnels
Friday night he'd bring home the bacon
my aunt waiting hungrily
kids crying, food all gone
beer and cigarettes in short supply
They'd shop, then drink, then laugh
cigarettes glowing red in the dark
tell me stories all night
nights I wanted to last forever



X

I remember my last day
would've said I'm sorry
if I had the chance
I had no grudge
-me-
a sperm and egg
bolted together for 100 days
a usual day
floating in an amnio sea
then-pulsing blood
a stab-a shriek!
pain both hot and swift
then-nothing
my mother
she died too that day
now we'll never meet
never hear her say
I wrecked the family
not me, really
the "doctor"
with his pointed stick
dirty from death
my mother his victim
let me say it now
I am so sorry mama
for wanting to exist