Linda M. Crate- A Poem

you’re haunting 

 

your face is haunting,

it peeps out at me from

behind bluebells; I see

it behind wisps of lilting

white fog, I see it in the

faces of the rocks; but

you’ve been gone for

more than a hundred

years; I know you’re not

here, but you haunt me

everywhere I go, I do

wonder if the lilies are

not your missives that

send me slants of light

courtesy of your heart;

I see your face dancing

in every mountain stream,

I see you beckoning me 

with the wizened hands

of trees; you are void yet

an intangible tangible that

evades me on butterfly wings.

A.g. Synclair- A Poem

Among

They appear in moments of silence

in the maddening tick

of another dim day

a small pebble in your shoe

brings an assassination

a firing squad

a hanging

monsters under the bed 

want you dead

rotting among the ruins of other men

among the debris in your ribcage

in the crumble of decaying lives

to replace you would be victory

so you open the windows at night

sleep on a small stone set to music

in the house where you live your life fiercely

among assassins

among angels

among monsters

among milestones

among fragments that become small gifts

like apples

like sleep

like carbon.

© 2012 A.g. Synclair

A.g. Synclair is the editor & publisher of The Montucky Review, a journal of poetry and prose. His work has appeared in numerous online an print publications. He lives, writes, and otherwise collaborates in southwestern Montana with his partner in crime, the artist and poet Heather Brager.

James D. Quinton- Two Poems

these late night london streets, infectious

  

midnight draws

a breath

exhales

mysterious

beautiful

enchantments

wonders and charms

intoxicated

roaming pavement

after pub and club

distant sirens

scream a melody:

in the darkness

there are

cries of danger

drama and delight

tower blocks loom

warm

lights radiate

from the homes within

above

a glimpse of stars

below

the rumble of

an underground train

ahead

a hint of paradise:

the smiles

and joy of a

culturally diverse

band of brothers

and sisters making

for an all night party

a beat

box perched

on a shoulder

sounds blazing out

these late night

london streets,

infectious…

we don’t say a word

tender kisses

harsh words

parting hands

last expressions

strangers now

shared life

discarded

divided

secrets

dreams

laughter

treasured intimacy

touches

sensual moments

memories

to be forgotten

we made love

a thousand times

clinging passionately

all night

now I see you

walking towards me

on the opposite side

of the road

there’s no

acknowledgement

no

eye contact

we don’t say

a word

 

 

 

BIO: James D Quinton is a British fiction and poetry writer. Recent accepted work has appeared in Burner Magazine, Red Fez, Zygote in My Coffee, Blacklisted Magazine, Heroin Love Songs, Chiron Review and Spudgun Magazine. www.jamesdquinton.co.uk

 

John Grochalski- A Poem

apples

the drumbeats of war

the caterwaul coming from

the inept and starched houses of washington

again and again and again

and the fruit vendor

apologizes for the cost of his apples going up

premium, he tells me

we buy premium apples now

used to be ninety-nine cents a pound

but now a dollar thirty

i don’t care, i tell him

it’s like passing oil through

the strait of hormuz

i have no real choice in the matter

an apple a day…..

but you notice the difference, he says

wrapping them up in wasted plastic

not really

but i smile and nod anyway

premium, he tells me again

handing me my bag

premium, i say back to him

shaking my little sack of gold

had to raise costs, he admits, waving

because, in the end, the fruit vendor

is way more honest

than any chamber of congress

and maybe we should throw him up there

with the rest of the fools

come any gray and gloomy november.

Jeffrey Park- Two Poems

THE SPLINTER

The splinter, do you remember

the little sliver

of something you had in your foot, so

small that you

couldn’t even see it

and I had to dig it out with my penknife

while you squirmed

and I dug and you moaned and gritted

your teeth

and I just kept digging because otherwise it

would get funky

and marinated in puss but in the end I

got it out and then I kissed

the hurt away?

I’ll let you in on

a little secret I’ve been keeping.

There was no splinter.

But later I did find a tiny thorn outside

and put it in

a little jar that I keep on my nightstand

and I often gaze at it

and think of you.

VEG

Eat your damn vegetables, my pop used to yell at me

like it was some kind of fierce wisdom, damn

vegetables, scrape them off the plate, bite them, chew them,

swallow them all, eat them up now.

And what would they do for me anyway– make me

grow up into a clean-living man?

Build moral fibers?

Keep my teeth from falling out, my bones

from splintering, my snot from turning all runny.

Then again: could there be more?

Maybe veggies well digested would surrender up insights

into the secret lives

of growing things, trees and weeds

and stinging nettles, hanging vines, sad backyard shrubs.

At its greenly pulsing heart

every celery stalk could be a primeval redwood, every turnip

a forest denizen from the misty dawn of time.

To digest them would be to know them all.

On the other hand: eat

your damn dessert, my dad also used to command. Lick out

that bowl, I’m watching you.

Eat your damn napkin, you little termite, eat the table,

eat the walls.

Leave the veggies on your plate, I tell

my kiddies, leave them lie as if they were poison. Go on

outside and put them back in the ground. Set them free.

Who knows, maybe

they’ll be able to do you a good turn someday, too.


Bio: Jeffrey Park is a native of Baltimore, Maryland. He currently lives in Munich, Germany where he works at a private secondary school, as well as teaching business English to adults. His most recent poems have appeared in Subliminal Interiors, Danse Macabre, Punk Soul Poet, Mobius, Darkling Magazine and elsewhere.

Bryan Murphy- A Poem

Nicosia

Showers that would extinguish forest fires

smother both sides of the sundered city.

Safe over Greek or Turkish coffee,

we eye the storm.

At the crossing, passport-holders saunter

through innumerable degrees of separation.

The young, reluctant to be told

whom they have drawn in the lottery of hate,

will close them, or die to keep them wide

for elders who order back

the tide of consumer history

that makes the salient divides civil –

Old City / New City, trader / buyer –

and offers those who may be called

upon to kill the chance instead

to wallow in the beauty of banality.

Bryan Murphy is a former teacher and translator who currently lives in Turin, Italy. His work has recently appeared in The Camel Saloon, Eunoia Review, Indigo Rising, The Pygmy Giant, Transparent Words and The View from Here. A volume of his short stories, provisionally entitled "Goodbye Padania" is forthcoming.

Donal Mahoney- A Poem

Father: Visiting Hours

To have him see me

see his face, tree roots

ripping through the clay,

branches out, supplicating,

 

I can’t take.

Better that I wait.

Better that he one day have

one last chance to feel

 

his one son’s son

tug a block beside him.

Jamie Grefe- A Poem

GONE, RISEN, STAY GONE

Kitchen licked: we wake to sour sleep-thoughts and ache
when throats burn; acidic sputters swell, and men nibble teeth around
your inked nape, pain inglorious.

So, lay it down, sister: cross-legged, soft sleeper, train tracks

of Old China: grey brick to brick, mountain heap,
slats of snow, the doom: those precise thirty-six hours when
the train sank back to Beijing like a cow to slaughter.

And the kitchen tunnel, mind’s vortex, a spaceship deserted in the Yellow 

River, rotten mist. Into the wife’s slumbering night-visions of a half-daughter. 

Until then, again, we say good-bye, kiss lips and call later. I’ll run to the bus, 

run to the train, run to school, to the river and back again;
our chosen home is ten legs long plus mine: twelve steps, two hands,
one bed: gone, risen, stay gone.

Sarah Gamutan- A Poem

Unbeknownst

 

I want to be the most wanted that day,

perhaps within top ten list of best shitheads.

Ladies kissing my pictures. My life - their music.

Stereos rambling, twitter tweeting. Knock- offs

 

of my dresses sold out. All database relative to

my profile. Nothing better than being followed

at. I wonder, does it make any better when your

name is at the top ten trends in Yahoo? More

 

paparazzi and the worst is gruesome style. "You

have to look unique to be remembered." Why

love. Why impeccably flawless. What about us

knuckleheads who only get notorious at night, or those

introverts who are noticed only when called. People

 

from unwanted nature? or from the dangers of

castaway who got consumed by greed? Lovers

who secretly love? Humans who secretly live.

They will be the most trending. They are my stars.

 

 

 

Sarah Gamutan's poems have been published in many online publications including The Scarlet Sound, The Legendary, Subliminal Interiors, Poetry Bulawayo, Every Writer's Resource and Ygdrasil. Her works are scheduled to appear in Negative Suck and Crack The Spine. She hails from Philippines where she works as a Customer Support Associate at  night and a poet at heart by day.

Linda M. Crate- A Poem

oil spill

 

you treat me like an oil spill,

you squeeze your eyes shut

pretending to see the problem

yet ignoring it in the hopes that

I will drift away, yet like oil I

paint your life in inky black and

I will not float away like a piece

of driftwood bobbing in the sea;

you will clean up the messes

you’ve made, you will change 

the way you’ve treated oceans or

I shall leave you in the cold and

lonely beams of moon silver.