FEATURED WRITER: MILNER PLACE
Milner has a general, aesthetic eye, finding beauty and significance in blind guitarists, flies flicking horses, crabs on shores, rivers, ships, sleeping fish, thoughtful bats, and a multitude of colorfully named characters. He can shift from epic omniscience to a quiet, singular memory. And though many pieces tend to read like dusty Westerns, they primarily turn to the great sea, the poetic brine. Milner's resonant message, however, is a rather content acceptance of the sure fact that we'll all leave life's shore and vanish into an uncharted voyage. Landlubbers and mariners alike will be gulped by earth's hungry soil or thirsty water. - David Herrle
BIO: After timber falling, fruit farm managing, sailing, skippering for Burl Ives, smuggling, sea venturing, tourist investment consulting, marlin fishing, photographing, etc., Milner finally settled in Huddersfield, England and currently remains, as he puts it, a "sort of poet". His poetry books include In A Rare Time Of Rain, The City Of Flowers, The Confusion Of Anglers, and Caminante.
--------
ATLANTIS
they know it's there
I know, the trouble
is
they keep moving
it around
inching it
past
each generation's wall
of knowledge, bricks
of straw and mud
soft
as the ocean's
detritus the roofs
always two fathoms
below the driver's
aspiration
always beyond
the next field
of kelp
--------
THE PASSER-BY
He came to a valley where the choughs built nests
in the churches of failed gods, in a rare time of rain,
and stopped to smell the flowers that shivered like
a perfmed sea, rippling their pink and saffron blooms,
their velver lips open to the sund dance of bees. If
there'd been any time to spare between his coming
and going from this place, he would have stayed,
even gone back to fetch the one with auburn hair.
Four white stallions cantered across the plain so flat
the wind could get no purchase, blew wild with rage,
blew sounds so far and fast the drumming of the hooves
was never heard, the neighing lost, even to the third
generation. The riders in their sable cloaks drew tight
their lips, and clutched their voices in their cheeks;
rowelled their steeds' flanks with crimson spurs.
--------
ICE FLOW
For Alan Pascoc
In 1845, Sir John Frank in and 128 men in the Terror and Erebus sailed for the Arctic to search for the North West Passage. Over the next three years every member of the expedition perished, leaving their skeletons and pitiful artifacts scattered among the bleak islands West of Baffin Bay. Most left their bones on a dreadful line of march southwards, after the ships had been broken by the ice. But the first three to die, William Braine, John Hartnell and John Tarrington, were buried on Beechey Island before the main disaster struck.
Recently, these graves were opened and the bodies found to be almost perfectly preserved in the permafrost. After being carefully examined by doctors and scientists, the corpses were reinterred in their original condition.
I'll say this for them, they did
their very best. The coffin of mahogany,
wrapped in navy blue. I heard
their shuffling feet along the ice,
Their heavy breathing, almost saw
their hard-fought dignity. I heard
the ringing picks that dug my pit,
screech of shovels on the snow,
The pious words that were for them
their epitaph among the floes and bergs.
Do you talk riddles shit do you talk
Riddles in this pit of piss ice
Do you talk
Some other day or year I woke,
if you can call it that, from a dreaming
of a bear. I swear I heard it scuffling
and snorting up topsides, clawing
and scraping at the snow and ice
that's all the season that we know,
that and the geese - they mind me
of that island in Baffin Bay, its ponds
harassed by Greylags, Barnacles and Brent,
a Saturday night of shiftless birds. Minds me
of Portsmouth in June, the Fleet in, and all
the girls in bloom, freckles and fancies.
John Benbow, that was his name, the lad
with buckles teeth, that played the flute,
with just, one eye, and cried, and died
in Port o'Spain. His sister had a mole
just under the left ear and brittle hair.
Odd that the geese call reaches here.
Time was time has this tickling when
the colours gone gone along black
has a certain sparkling don't you think
Know what I think about a lot?
Sand in my shoes and its warm
irritation, like tea and currant
buns - it's more than that, it clings
to mortality, holds in its grains
the sun, the light that cozens
out the flowers: and with the sea
it dances,, curl and roll, to fill
the shell whorls of my ears.
How can you lie forever lie like a marine
ha ha quick march left right left right right
out of the picture frozen shoes
A fierce tide of dreams, a monstrous engine driving through the
night, grumbling on and on in a rush of fever.
So much forgetting, each memory takes another shape,
becomes a story told by other men in other days, and nothing.
nothing stranger that this bed. From here I trundle like
an albatross, beating on air until it breaks from land; then
wheel, and soar away. And so I see the Terror and the Erebus
creeping through the bergs, weaving an aimless course among
the reflections of black cliffs, gliding into the hanging fog,
only the masts and topsails riding above the floss. Dead
men haul on sheets and buntlines, hoarse-voiced from rasping
air, hands bleeding onto snow white decks. And all around
on ice floes, splintered rocks, seal bark like mourning dogs.
East by North West by South full fathom five the bear's
up there it's snuffling I can smell hot hoary breath and
musty bones and dark fleas in its coat
My brother Tom says, said, that God's the Captain,
we must holystone the decks. Strange how I hear
his voice, his face a foreigner, yet I feel
his rough hand on my shoulder, neither warm nor cold.
He has a pair of hands had Tom, could splice and serve
so neat, but shy with girls and couldn't hold his beer.
Aurora Bor bazaars and Bethnell Green camphor and muslin
poor Tom boy on the deck cry wolf all darkness is
the source of light the bear the whitest bear
Another phantom of a dream stands out.
I heard a knocking on the door, rasp
of a jemmy on the coffin lid; a flood
of light that burst my head, a voice
that blew my temples wide, more voices
and a tapping on my chest. As if dropped
out of a womb I felt a stirring
as of life; cried out but they were deaf
it seems, and picked my pockets, probed
with knives and tweezers. I cried for darkness,
called on night - the awfulness of living
when its mask came off. I feared the warmth,
I trembled in the steaming bath of light, until
they hammered back the lid, let out the bright.
Cobwebs in cooking pots bones for glue stars
shaking quivering astral sea fat craw of Spring
Now that I've died that other death - now
I can hew the darkness with an axe,
break all the doors down, walk through
the river gardens and sleeping ships;
a hay meadow, brown nipples, snaking tongue.
Red redness of jaws strawberries and cream
Soft wind and the scent of islands, plums.
She rides bareback bare-breasted furry white
I know my strength. No wind can fail me now.
The bear is back and snuffling in the snow.
--------
FEATURED WRITER: TONYA KELLEY
Tonya's debut poetry collection is entitled Unsexy. That's like calling a book by Wilde Witless. Tonya's work is quite sexy, hip, and attune to variant lingo, slang, and idiom. She has a knack for creating swift movement (from lofty refrences like "Give me liberty" to more personal goals like "Or at least a hot ass") and smooth leaps from image to image. Anyone who evokes the name of Roald Dahl rocks. - David Herrle
BIO: Connecticut resident Tonya is a writer of poetry, short fiction and stage plays. Her work has been featured in such publications as Promise Magazine, Jill: A Magazine for Women, Subtle Tea, Dicey Brown, Iconoclast and Skyline Magazine. She is a regular contributor to The Electric Mayhem and her first book of poetry, UNSEXY (Wasteland Press) was released in 2003.
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HOW I LEARNED TO USE CHOPSTICKS
Six
Flights
Of
Mar-
Ble
Stairs
Luggage to a green sleeper
Thin walls, curly rain hair
Four channels of porn (all straight)
Cigarettes and cigarettes
Bare hands, empty feet
Tumble down the stairs, onto the
Street. Navigate through the First
Avenue mud snakes.
Hold hands, take him to Karma,
Where you can still smoke.
Hookahs,
Red lights,
Compari,
Stella,
Barmaids in ripped t-shirts, too small
For their bellies.
Girls kiss and fall from the bar edge.
Blond is pretty.
Brunette is tattooed - peeking through
The top of a black bra.
We give them their privacy.
He's searching my tongue for that
Cool metal blend, unlike blood
Or bathwater.
He says: You come to Munich.
You'll enjoy it there.
He means: Interesting Woman, come
Naked with me on a string
Of barbed-wire.
It's too dark to hear.
A few nothing blocks and a table
At Go. He orders in Japanese. I am
The chopsticks I used for
The first time.
German,
Japanese,
Red awakenings,
An old Berlin.
I am the lower east side - and
A fumbling chopstick.
Full to bed,
To wake
To the weird but true on
Page nine of tomorrow's paper.
All walls are thin.
All girls are screamers,
And cacklers,
And O baby,
And cats, gracefully banging plaster.
He says: Is she alright?
I say: She's miles from the rain
Attacking the street.
It's too loud to see.
We join in their lung battle
Orchestra of transient rate tourists,
Forty a head,
A bed,
A moral bed-post impalement.
Mornings won't talk Munich.
Only the hair changes,
Make-up,
Umbrellas took a hike with a
Single argyle sock.
He hadn't slept, but
Watched my reflection breathe in
The ceiling. He quotes movies.
The greatest decisions aren't made
Over pints,
Eighth Street,
Angry friends,
3:00 flights to Europe.
He says: Interesting woman, I
Think I could love you.
I say: You need a haircut. And a
Shag. I would probably enjoy
Munich.
Now, repeat all this back, but
In Japanese.
He and his luggage read my
Book on the corner of Astor. Me
To the subway,
The Alamo,
A Mexican hat dance,
A French duel.
His first name is M, like
The letter
Or a moment.
I never caught his last.
--------
LITTLE CONSOLATION
I feel no loss of you.
You are here on my paper -
The blank page in the back
Of the book I bought to
Read on the way home.
And as long as you are
Here, black as black on this
White as white space - a
Gift of a thousand trees - Yes,
As long as you are here,
Trains and planes and phones
Can go about their business,
But not as a nemesis or
An archrival.
--------
ANYTHING
Give me liberty Or at least a hot ass
And a collection of Dahl I haven't yet seen
Your vacuum is a broom
Children slide socks
In a room that used to look like an amusement park ride
(he said the carousel was his favorite)
All roads lead to sexy When touching a freckled face
Speak softly turned on
Your reflection in the screen I lay on mine
You on top and say scared and Hot heat and tits
To lay away a Sunday
In white sheets and cold coffee Hugs and kisses for you
Let's hide in the bushes
And pounce on timing Or anything
--------
FEATURED WRITER: COLLIN KELLEY
Collin excels at interpreting himself and communicating the interpretation. His primarily "confessional" pieces are forthright, vulnerable, and touching without being typical diary evacuation passed as clever art. I appreciate poets who blend autobiographical fact with poetic subjectivity, expanding experiences or impressions through verse, essentially making them more important and permanent. Plus, I love poetry that asks and asks and asks questions, no matter how unanswerable they are or who sees the poet's tears while asking them. - David Herrle
BIO: Atlanta native Collin Kelley's debut collection of poetry, Better To Travel, was nominated for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, Lambda Literary Award, and Georgia Author of the Year Award. His work has appeared in The Pedestal, SubtleTea, Lily, Poetry Super Highway and many other online mags. New work is forthcoming in Blaze and in the UK in Homeground.
--------
GYPSY FLOWERS
The old woman blindsides me in Leicester Square,
pushes the scrub of flowers into my fingers,
the tinfoil holding the stems damp from her grip.
Take them, sweetheart, here sweetheart, how about a pound?
She is a gypsy, head in a scarf, her face a relief map
of all the places she has been driven from over the centuries.
Her voice an amalgamation of those same lands,
touched with a dash of cockney to make her blend.
I want to hand them back, refuse the offering, go on my way
to wherever my way might be, with that boy on my mind,
the hell he had put me through, and what I would do with him
upon my return.
The gypsy seizes one hand and holds it fast, the other fishes
for the coin, our eyes meet, lock against my will.
You have to get away from him, sweetheart.
She opens a window into my world and I want it shut.
I drop the coin on the ground and run, the flowers crushed
in my sweating palm.
I push past the tourists, buskers, lads and birds,
find myself at Piccadilly Circus.
I open my fist and survey the remains, weeds really,
staining my skin, filling the lines.
A map of who I am, who I had been, where I was going.
Slumped on the steps of Eros, wild to catch my breath,
the next plane home, the tail end of my life.
--------
BELL CURVE
The first night Tina called,
our junior year of high school,
Thursday out of the blue.
She had already decided I was her project,
to be reshaped and reformatted.
It was part of her good works clause.
She was going to right my sinking ship,
get me out of brown belts and blue jeans,
punk my hair.
I wore a long black coat, lost weight,
listened to Depeche Mode, smoked cigarettes,
shoplifted like one of Charlie Manson's girls.
My mother hated Tina, called her bad influence.
She didn't make me gay, as my father surmised
but she helped take the hinges off the door.
She taught me invaluable lessons of bad driving,
not giving a damn what others think,
and that heartbreak can make you howl.
No matter how far you get away from
high school, first love leaves you marked
like holy water across the face.
It is a brutal exorcism from innocence
and those who tell you otherwise are liars.
I still remember that night we snuck into
her first girlfriend's room, scented like
patchouli and Kate Bush's face glowing
in the dark. I listened to their voices rise
and fall, the interminable silences, quiet
in my own corner. Devastated by the world
Tina had opened up for me, unsure whether
to thank her or tear out her throat.
We have come apart more times over the years
than I can count, but always righted ourselves.
Like the married couple we promised to be
in case of an emergency.
In case the howls and devastation were
too much for either of us to bear.
--------
TRIVIAL PURSUITS
That night over Trivial Pursuit,
when I really looked at you for the first time,
got the answer wrong, drove home
chanting the correct one purposely swallowed,
seeing your face like a god in the headlights.
--------
SHORT TIME
The sign says,
Will be back shortly.
When did you leave?
When will you come back?
How long is shortly?
We thrive on time,
and this is the gap.
A break in the flow.
Shortly is filled with
monsters under the bed,
deserting daddies,
distant sirens.
It is moments of truth,
waiting lines,,
starving children,
a call from the doctor.
Shortly is vague and
ill defined, as all time
really is.
At least make it concrete,
for comfort's sake:
Will return at noon.
It's something to pin
your hopes on.
It's something to set
your watch by.
--------
FEATURED WRITER: DANIELA BUCCILLI
Daniela makes stark statements. For example: "Nothing deep about the husband", "Nothing deep about his dying", and "'cept the bullets his wife is dreaming that lodge into his back". Sometimes a following line lessens the punch: "I woke up and thanked god that I didn't have aids" is followed by "as I did in my dream". She's also not afraid to show her honest impressions or her self-doubt. Even the way she writes about her dog indicates Daniela's cool talent. - David Herrle
BIO: Born in Scora, Italy and brought up in Morningside/North Hills of Pittsburgh, Daniela is a Pennsylvania high school literature teacher. She has won the Eddie Nichols Fiction Award, the Scott Turrow Short Fiction Prize, and an NEH grant for poetry study at DePaul University in Chicago. She plans to teach conversational English in Krakow, Poland this summer.
--------
HUNTING TRIP
Tomorrow he goes hunting
before the ducks lift off.
He's called his father early,
will leave before the dawn
in orange 'tigues and tired.
Her killer, sleepy-eyed,
sets the pile up ready:
one padded seat, the entrail
bag, a gutting knife--
Nothing deep about the husband
or his annual hunting trip
'cept he's taken half a day off
'stead the full day that he needs.
So he'll have to walk back out of
Butler County's hunting grounds,
while the others, cocked and loaded,
wait for stirrings in the brush.
She'd like to grant him one day longer
for his hunting trip with Father,
but no one's sellin' her the hours,
no one's willing to miss the buck--
Nothing deep about his dying
on a half day hunting trip,
'cept her standing martyr-ready
to be widowed in a cinch.
Nothing deep about her husband
dying; nothing deep about his killing,
'cept the bullets his wife is dreaming
that lodge into his back,
as she sits here wishing
she weren't even that.
Pancakes and Questions
I woke up and thanked god
that I didn't have aids
as I did in my dream
and neither did my lover
so I didn't have to explain an affair
or have to hear about one-
Downstairs in the cool
on the floor slept my boyfriend
having drunk too much again.
his eyes still on morning tv, backwards
he crawls on the couch and asks me,
"What can I make you for breakfast?"
I know he wants forgiveness.
But I don't trust him enough
to make the omelet I want.
I say, "Thanks, anyway. I'll have your damn pancakes started in a minute."
His head pops up--
hovering over the pillow and without bite,
he asks me, "Baby? you
get your period last night?"
I will carry the plate of pancakes
and the syrup bottle over
to where he lies and then
settle beside him,
before I ask him
about his sleep.
--------
MY ROTTY-SHEEPDOG
I for my dog
am happy writing poems.
He for me
happy be.
I sit
on his lamb belly white;
hold like oars his paws.
Let him allow me permission
to bite him
to feed him
my fist wrist deep
in his jaw.
Tolerates my rough-housing;
Tolerates my game
where I lift him by his teeth
and pretend he cannot kill me.
Leaning forward at the ready
or titled, left ear cocked,
"When the Man he came a callin'
good I done-barked and barked."
Woke me startled, cold
And icy; woke me
Soon enough
To save me.
I for my dog
will poems write happy.
He for me
will happy be.
--------
RACE IN INDIANAPOLIS
Across the fast track highway
From my brother's apartment,
Trees of the same generation
Line a bike lane
In predictable scatter.
Walking in hippie dress,
I ask the black couple
In royal American garb
Beside the Schwinn ten speeds
If there are benches along the trail.
Yes, but none shaded, the bare-
chested cyclist said. He wears his
Shirt draped around his head
Like a sheik.
I make sure to stare
Only at the woman,
Watching the lobster clasp
Of her two inch yellow gold necklace
Slip into the dip in her collarbone.
When I smile, I remember
My teeth, step behind them quickly,
And thank them.
Do black women or Indian women
Hate smiley white woman.
I can't stop the smiling-
I'm smiling myself to death-
Like the time in '87 when Shantelle
Recited my example poem to
Antwone in glowing mockery.
I felt a punch to the lung,
But I kept smiling.
While I was listening to the Beatles,
Three black kids carrying crates
Full of chocolate candy bars
For $4.50 each
Knocked on the apartment door.
I noticed one's uncombed African
Carpethead. Now feeling guilty
For noticing such a difference
I buy the chocolate.
Next time I walk the bike trail
I'll concentrate on the circles
Around every trunk of each 25 year old tree.
A mini-race track, a X-mas train set.
Like ripples around a dropped dream.
Concentric circles
In dusty black on the tar trail.
Lawn mower, my engineer brother
Explains. Perhaps it is to avoid
Backing up the machine
That makes the groundkeeper drive in circles.
--------
FEATURED WRITER: LOUIS BRODSKY
Louis is a natural satirist, humorist, and linguistic tapdancer/juggler. These elements combine to make his poetry unpredictable and lively. His poems have taken me from solemnity to spitting laughter. Aside from astute non-fiction, Louis has written about cooked bodies in Nazi death camps as well as a man diagnosed as "inalienable" by CIA drones in Area 51, groupies and Gulliver, triangles and circles and squares, and interminably descending elevators. - David Herrle
BIO: Louis Daniel Brodsky graduated Magna Cum Laude at Yale University in 1963, received an M.A. in English at Washington University in 1967, and earned an M.A. in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University in 1968.
Brodsky is the author of fifty volumes of poetry as well as eight scholarly volumes on William Faulkner, including William Faulkner, Life Glimpses. His his latest book of fiction, Rated Xmas has been published by Time Being Books.
--------
PAPOOSE LAKE
One quiet night,
While he was eating dinner by himself
(A ritual in which he'd engaged for fourteen years,
Ever since the judge issued his divorce decree,
Released him, officially, forever,
From the turmoil of his marriage vows),
He began to shiver and heave uncontrollably,
As if infected with avian flu, SARS, Ebola.
The manager of the restaurant, completely confused,
Deferred to his dishwasher, who called 911.
Within minutes, County Ambulance Service arrived,
To ferry him to the hospital, across the street.
After three inscrutable hours in the triage center,
None of the conscientious-if-sleep-deprived doctors
Could even venture an uneducated guess
As to the etiology of his mysterious illness.
They were flummoxed. They'd never seen anything
Approximating the ugliness of his pustular eruptions.
One plucky second-year resident
Suggested that his condition was prehistoric
And that he appeared to be "Pleistocene Man,"
His body a Martian landscape supurrated with volcanoes.
He remained undiagnosed for five weeks,
Isolated in the basement boiler room,
Spewing fiery fluids akin to magma,
Until his temblors stopped, went silent, died,
As did he, in an eerie meltdown of flesh and bone.
Instead of expeditiously burying his cooling chunks,
The hospital's CEO sold the remains to a broker,
Who, in turn, dumped them on the black market,
Where they were confiscated by the CIA,
Which transported them to Groom Lake - Area 51.
In an underground "black budget" laboratory,
They were tested for extraterrestrial properties.
After seventy-two hours of rigorous magnetic imaging,
The technicians pronounced the pieces "inalienable."
They were then passed on to the resurrection facility,
At Papoose Lake, a few miles south.
There, they were bombarded by rays of extragalactic matter
Unknown even to NASA, the Pentagon, or Karl Rove,
Until a metamorphosis occurred,
Rendering the inert clods elastic, rubbery, throbbing.
Within three weeks, the pyroclastic masses recombined
To form not the victim who'd been stricken at dinner
But a three-headed, two-tailed albino baby,
Whom they had to "deep six" in their "miscue unit,"
Overrun with thousands of other experimental monstrosities.
They could only hope that the next specimen
Would yield a fully operational human being
And thereby justify the book-cooked expenditures
Lavished on "Operation Lazarus."
--------
MENSCHENFRESSER
This past Friday, in Kassel, Germany,
At the conclusion of Armin Meiwes's trial,
Chief judge Volker Mütze read the verdict:
Guilty by virtue of manslaughter
In the death of Bernd-Jürgen Brandes,
Punishable by eight and a half years in prison.
Speaking on behalf of the other two judges,
Mütze subsequently opined
That the prosecution's plea for a murder conviction
And a life sentience for Meiwes
Was morally, ethically, and legally untenable,
Since the victim agreed, even begged, to be killed.
"Both were looking for the ultimate kick.
This was an act between two extremely disturbed people
Who both wanted something from each other."
Despite the fact that Meiwes
Was spared the ultimate penalty, life imprisonment,
Harald Ermel, his lawyer, vowed to appeal the judgment,
Arguing that his client was only guilty
Of "killing on request," just an illegal form of euthanasia,
Punishable by no more than five years.
Had Meiwes deceived the aggrieved party?
Not if one accepts the evidence
That the defendant misled no one on his Web site:
"Search young, well built 18 to 30-Jaehrigen for slaughtering."
And indeed Bernd-Jürgen Brandes was that someone
Who, of his free will, eagerly responded to the posting,
Indulged, in March 2001,
In a videotaped orgy of salacious role-playing
And sadomasochistic lovemaking with Meiwes
Before exhorting his partner to kill him.
Fulfilling Brandes's desire,
Meiwes stabbed him repeatedly with a kitchen knife,
Then hung his lover's corpse on a meat hook,
Masterfully carving it into pieces
That conveniently fit into plastic bags, for freezer storage.
During the brief trial,
With calm, almost religious fervor
Rising to transcendence, enlightenment,
Meiwes testified, "With every piece of flesh I ate,
I remembered him.
It was like taking communion."
To further enhance his client's credibility, sincerity,
Ermel offered this to the judges:
"He will voluntarily undergo psychiatric therapy
"To get away from his fetish for men's flesh.
I'm sure he won't do anything like this again."
Doubtless, this had a salubrious effect on the sentence.
In addition, a court-appointed psychiatrist
Concurred that the defendant was not afflicted
With "diminished responsibility" at the time of the killing.
At stake in this admittedly ambiguous case
Was the integrity of German jurisprudence itself,
Or so all parties and the judges equally believed.
Perhaps now, revisionist historians will be vindicated
In their defense of the Third Reich,
Arguing that six million Jews
Had pleaded with the Nazis to give them what they wanted:
Mass gassings and burnings -
Hitler the provider of their ultimate gratification.
--------
A FUNERAL TO ATTEND
One rain-dreary Saturday morning,
He knew, full well, that precisely at ten,
He was to attend a funeral.
But for the life of him,
He just couldn't remember its location
Or, for that matter, who the deceased was.
He'd never suffered amnesia, depression.
Certainly, as far as he knew,
He wasn't a candidate for Alzheimer's disease.
And yet, there he found himself,
Stuck in the crotch of a dilemma,
Trying to decide what to do with who and where.
He was almost relatively certain
That he felt he had an obligation.
Clearly, a dead person (male? female?)
Had once been close enough (family? friend?)
That he'd made a mental note
To be at the service and interment.
Even as morning's dismal silvery drizzle
Grew into afternoon gloom,
He kept haunting himself for answers.
By evening, when he finally got into bed,
Laid himself, along with his frustration, to rest,
He was no closer to the truth of his death, yesterday.
--------
.
FEATURED WRITER: BRANDI WATTS
A poet who dares poetize about her own skeleton deserves a big star in my book. Brandi's easy but fruitful way blesses us with frequent, striking images and insight. Her choice of particulars never fails to impress: a trumpet "swooning fireflies", a bird repeatedly striking a window "like a funeral drum or dawn in Iraq", a face is "a sunstruck cloud". Versatile, nimble, and… "Your floor looks like the floor of a schizophrenic". What else to say? - David Herrle
--------
BIO: Brandi Watts was born and raised in Montana; she currently lives in Missoula, Montana, where she works as a professional/technical writer out of her home. She spends her free time writing, floating the rivers, and appreciating the outdoors. She enjoys travelling and recently returned from a trip to Paris. For inspiration, she swims in glacial lakes and canyon rivers with her dog, Luna, and other local poets.
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I AM A SKELETON
I don't like my bones.
I'm afraid of them.
Thinking about my bones
makes me shiver, sick.
My bones are at the center
of every piece of me.
My bones surround me.
I pack fat around them,
even try for some muscle
to hold them together,
keep them quiet.
But no matter how much
I cover them up,
I can't make them disappear
without collapsing.
--------
AUGUST SONG
On the porch
just look at the sky throb
with the music
and he stands on the corner
swooning fireflies
through his trumpet.
The dock is swamped
with poker faces
tossing life rings to
lame ducks.
Remember the depression.
The great depression.
It's perspective.
It's the only way to know
things are good
little girls clomping
down the wooden sidewalk
dreaming of bubblegum
and shoes that fit
swaying smiling
to his sad brassy tune.
--------
SPRUNG
I knew it was spring
when a robin
smacked into my window
and landed on the awning
just outside
stunned but clear eyed
looked like he was
glaring at me
must be the reflection
I thought
and stood
waving my arms
to alarm the bird
-human inside-
beware
hands in the air
the robin struck
like a rattlesnake
in an aquarium
he wants to kill me
I thought
no mistake
he knows where he's going
next day
he smacked my window again
not just once
but over and over
like a funeral drum
or dawn in Iraq
eight maybe ten times
thump…thump…thump…
so finally I stood up
and cranked open
half the window
go away
I shouted
under my breath
so my coworkers
wouldn't hear
he gave up
I wondered
what he thought
what he had really
given up?
--------
RUE DAUPHINE
Parisian fortune tellers
are crazy about cheese
with messages written
in the flaky mold.
Their pet tigers
line the alleyway
where witch puppets
with broken strings
are exchanged for euros
dipped in dirty chocolate.
Lights fill their noses
with the smell of life,
and the Seine reminds them
of beautiful death.
--------
READY OR NOT
I let the flowers die again.
It happens all the time.
Your floor looks like the floor
of a schizophrenic,
my neighbor said, off the cuff.
I blamed it on the dog.
She chewed up my book
about St. John's Wort
and some other stuff.
I just want things to pile up,
deep enough for me
to crawl underneath.
Dark but dry.
A safe hiding place.
--------
FEATURED WRITER: NII PARKES
Through a lyrical voice, Nii can breathe beauty and importance into unlikely things, from cow-nibbled grass to "the crooked escape of a five-legged spider" to palm nut soup. He wrote: "How is it we forget the little things that made us smile". Nii also has a knack for unpredictably sobering lines, like these about feminized death: "I wish that she would come with flowers/so my bed wouldn't stink". I think Nii has lasting talent. His upcoming novel should be a colorful ride. - David Herrle
BIO: Born to Ghanaian parents, Nii attended Manchester Metropolitan University, U.K. He's a performance poet and author who is also working for literary revival in Ghana.
--------
AFTER THE MEN HAVE GONE
there is a sideways walk
perfected long before man
invented side shuffles
to dance
a careful clatter free crawl
executed with aplomb
by crabs
emerging from caverns
beneath sea sand
the moon out the tide in
crabs cruise the shrunk shore
competing for food
and fun
and hollows
sidling about starstruck
in their blue-black
muscled-to-fit shells
they cavort and consult
clawing back
the land they own
after the men have gone
--------
THE PROMISE
my love
I will be home
before the bats darken the sky
I will come
with yam and grasscutter
and dine with you
by the coalpot
then
I will hold you in my arms
in the loud glow of fireflies
until the drawing
of the first palm wine.
--------
PAIN IS A PALE HING
i don't know what it's like to be a motherless child
and i've never heard a caged bird sing
but i do know pain well enough to know
that the colour purple is too dark to express it
too rich to embody its poverty
too round to mimic its sharpness
see, pain is a pale thing
the pale hue of bones
systematically stripped of flesh by eager whips
in pale hands spitting blood in all directions
the colour of milk expressed from dark breasts
to moisten pale lips
eyes stimulated by the southern hangman's noose
to look back beyond seas for reasons why
a pale rope cut off their breath
pain is a pale thing
seen in the afro bob of unpicked cotton
the foaming mouth of the overworked man
the sharp sliver of paper bearing unfair trade
agreements pushed by the IMF
with the fervour of cocaine dealers
the seeds of strange fruit
pain is the stark reality
of the sweet magnolia's white flowers
the child of slave-quarter lust disowned
and owned by its own father
the pale shimmer of a knife
stabbing you in the back
the ceramic teeth of cast cowries
illustrating a woman's struggles
pain is the rotten luck
of the fertilising sperm in a river of semen
gushing from the mouth of an enslaved
dick, tom or harry
pain is being impaled for life
pain is a pale thing
the gleam of silver and gold
stealing away our humanity
and it doesn't take a motherless child
or a caged bird
to tell me that
--------
UNDER THE BAOBAB TREE
Under the spell of Paapa's voice,
with the roots of the baobab
biting into our backsides,
we gathered for the funeral of daytime;
As night chased the sun over the horizon,
we heard him ask
"When all your dreams are yours,
what else will you dream of?"
--------
FEATURED WRITER: DAVID HERRLE
Lovely! Sublime! Just kidding. Though I prefer writing prose, poetry provides more room for me to indulge my love of rhythm and "sound", echoing of similar words, subjective abstraction, and alliteration. Perhaps the scenarios are secondary, contingent on an initial tempo or seminal image. For instance, in the first piece below I started with an unshakeable repetition of the name Sheryl. The name's sound inspired the ensuing poem: "Sheryl" sounds like "tumble"; "tumble" sounds like "under"; "under" sounds like "sun"; "Sheryl" sounds like "floral"; and so on. In "Vera Viviano" I spilled words the same way. Like sculpture, gradual shaping. I tend to write about/through females in most of my work. A fetish? Maybe. A deep, deep love and amazement? Doubtlessly. Oscar Wilde said, "Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood." - David Herrle
BIO: I'm a Pittsburgh, PA native. I believe in Grand Purpose and the call of Grace from beyond nature. I'm a working writer, founder/editor of SubtleTea.com, author of Anywhere But Her, Love Is Blonde, and Venus Egmont. A new novel I'm writing, Where Are You, Fine-Wine Face, is currently haunting many of my moments - next to other art projects and my lady love.
--------
SHERYL LEAVES A NOTE
Sheryl
tumbles
under the cold sun
to the last-gasping
October grass
hardly breathing
drizzle-low
a gas-light hum
her chest bare-
ly moving.
Children-spent.
Husband-spent.
Spared some hours by their
workday and schoolday.
Sheryl
unbuttons
her floral blouse
unsnaps her hot bra
plopped out
breasts
bride-white
in the cold sun
not caring if the neighbors see.
They become brave
react like sun-hungry iguanas
but prettier
profound
if given the chance.
She used them to rear her
daughters
even when
the babies learned
to bite.
They've been untouched by her husband
for ten years.
He has slept in a separate bed
for five.
There is no father; there is no wife.
There are only daughters, in limbo.
Sheryl
feels the pale twins
laughing
and the sun feels warmer.
When her husband returns from work,
expecting to find dinner and dessert,
he finds a note instead, written in
pink ink:
The children and I have gone
to live under a warmer sun.
I'm leaving you the home
and leftover roast.
We ate early.
He tears up the note,
gnaws on the meat,
guzzles a beer,
gets pissed at the silence.
Notices another note right above the sink,
written in pink ink:
Bastard.
--------
ANIMA TOES
Woman toes
are secret piano keys,
soft diamonds proudly flaunted.
The melody of the song of the feet,
harmonized by the angel ankles.
--------
THE ONLY RAIN
Rain.
You.
Shhhh…
This will pass.
Rain.
You.
Youth.
Shhhh…
This will pass.
Rain.
You.
Our heat mingling.
Shhhh…
This will pass.
--------
VERA VIVIANO
She fled from the dorm room
when her roommate Kate
tried to kiss her after
she finished her shower
wrapped in a seashell-print towel
blushed and still hot
hair twisted wet
and Vera sat next to Kate on the messy bed
and Kate smiled like no girl
had ever smiled at Vera before
a brave smile
a smile full of lips seeming to hum hum
through Vera's bones
and she pictured her bones
vibrating white as Kate's carnivore Cupid-cuspids
and Kate's eyes were all pupil and gluttonous
so Vera fled from the dorm room
seashell-print towel wound around
her blushed and still hot body
hair twisted wet
suddenly aware that she was
in the hall but not too worried
because the dorm was all-girl
but then Vera thought of Kate
and how she was all-girl
and friend and roommate
yet something had changed
and what was it
what made Kate
smile that way?
Was it because of movies or Victoria's Secret?
Or because guys repeated the beauty of doing it?
Vera waited in the seashell-print towel
hair twisted wet.
She thought of the parties
how guys poured beer on their muscles
and girls sucked it off
high-speed pink leeches
girls on knees
all-pupil eyes
cackling
while back home daddies pretend
their darlings study on Fridays.
Vera feared that the change would happen
to her some night at a party
or after a shower
a mocking realization that it all is
inevitable and she's no different
just as how it gets easier to let
guys have their ways
like suffering barefoot over sharp glass bits
to make it to the soft grass
and the feet rejoice at the contrast
of before and after: the fear and rapture.
Given over to the new knowing.
She returned to the dorm room
where her roommate Kate
tried to kiss her after
she finished her shower
and Kate cowered on the bed
hugging a pillow
and tears had shrunk the pupils.
"I'm sorry," said Kate.
"That's okay," said Vera.
"I'm lonely."
"I'm here."
Kate dove and Vera caught her.
She kissed her friend on the cheek.
Her twisted wet hair tickled her back.
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