Thursday, March 29, 2012

Sarabjeet Garcha- Three Poems

What Makes Me Believe in Reincarnation

a memory that sings
of sepia nights

ghost fingers that touch
the gossamer of spent days

a heart that seeks asylum
in the igloo of imagination

icicles that prick
the ageless heat of the body

dreams that ripple
with recollection

a meteor that hovers
on the edge of her nose ring


Your Handwriting

the silt of
an ink-river

rolling into

a relic chamber
painted with

the heart’s hieroglyphs
the soul’s trompe l’oeil

(for Sudhanshu)


Gogglecast

Two glass curtains
veiling your eyes
showed me to me

in two neat pieces
Images
dipped
deep
in mirrors

and unearthed
my bipolar personality

while my singularity
toppled

into the water bodies
of your vision


Sarabjeet Garcha published his first book of poems, The Half-Moon Halo, in 2004. His work has appeared in The Vocabula Review, Foundling Review, The Literary Burlesque, and Indian Literature, among others. He also writes in Hindi, and his first book of Hindi verse, Vaani Phir Bhi Shoonyamanaa (Even Then Voice Is Tranquil Hearted), was published in late 2011. His English translation of selected poems of the award-winning Marathi poet Hemant Divate is in press. Sarabjeet lives in Delhi, where he works as an editorial manager for an international publisher of scientific, technical, and medical books. He can be reached via www.sarabjeetgarcha.com.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Sara Fitzpatrick Comito- A Poem

Spill

No tag and pull, nothing approaching a downward
yank, just a dawning awareness of a heavy current
counter to the attitude of my rod’s reaching tip. A
partial reel to check, and as suspected, rising in a
mound, the turtle grass prop-sheared or dissuaded
by the brown algae, given advantage from runoff

upriver. But amidst those grey-green blades, a clown
grimace of grouper. It is an unexpected catch. The
biggest fish I’ve ever had on, and besides little rocky
structure, I’m fishing from shore. The beachy slope
never draws such goliaths. My trudging revolutions
bring him near faster than reasonable. Is the thing

swimming toward me?

Ashore now, the fish gives way to an upright form. Tall,
lithe, with flashing eyes, he speaks with apology in his
strangely accustomed tenor. We are together until the
turning of the tide, this new love and I.

In the morning, all the tourists are evacuated. A breach
at the plant, for too long under wraps, has been proven
by the loudmouth researchers to cause mutations among
the sealife. The health effects to humans remain unknown.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Felino A. Soriano- Poetry

While

mentioning



                                    toward what naturally escapes            a
certainty of angles multiplying age within cyclic
devotion

                        to
a
                                                gathering of happenings, occurrences

occultation
recovers shades of shadows’ ancestry
covering with handed brands

heat-etch manifest
                                                                        a
trickling of sound serenading absence’s artificial self
arching away
                                                           from
reactive notion of the serial
abbreviations


While

observing the child hiding her face in elation



game with
            mother’s laughing prism (her hands a continued melody of rocking, rocking)
highlighting
                        theory of this moment a
never-return to the again of hope
                                    and
perhaps mother reinvents within silence
of a daydreaming spectrum the
child into her growing quick, wait
then the laughter of joy outlines pattern of
familial exultation


While

gathering appearance of the window’s perspective



touch
                        of the whirl’s electronic spiral
touches
                        opportune exposure indenting
                                                                                    understanding
of dragonfly’s personable cliché




Felino A. Soriano has authored 50 collections of poetry, including Analyzed Depictions (white sky books, 2012) and Intentions of Aligned Demarcations (Desperanto, 2011).  He publishes the online endeavors Counterexample Poetics and Differentia Press.  His work finds foundation in philosophical studies and connection to various idioms of jazz music.  He lives in California with his wife and family and is a case manager and advocate for adults with developmental and physical disabilities.  For further information, please visit www.felinoasoriano.info

Monday, March 26, 2012

Donal Mahoney- A Poem

 
What Purpose Does A Rabbit Have

The same nightmare woke my father 
every night for years. 
He had no idea what it meant 
and so he wrote the story down 
and saved the note and hoped 
some day he'd understand it.
But a note like that 
can be misplaced. 

Decades later Father 
found the note 
in a drawer of socks 
he hadn't worn in years.
He found it underneath 
his old glass eye the night 
Mother came back on the Harley 
to "make their marriage work."

He reminded Mother they had 
been divorced for years
and then, despite her tears, 
he told her, "After all this time, 
we both know now that you 
were gone before you left. 
But now you're back so 
let me tell you all about 

the nightmare I've had every night 
since you took the bike and left. 
I wrote the story down to tell the kids
when they grew up but they ran off 
before I had a chance to ask them
if they knew what my dream might mean. 
You'd like the kids. They're pretty smart.
Anyway my note says this: 

'What purpose does a rabbit have 
other than as prey?
What difference does a rainbow make 
in a rabbit’s day?'
You tell me now you love me, 
always have and always will. 
But the kids are gone forever 
so take the Harley now and go."

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Doug Draime- Two Poems

A Stormy Night As The Electricity Goes On And Off

The falling rain
sounds like a
huge crackling campfire
and the dog is
under the bed pretending
to be the cat
Everyone on tv
is dancing a weird tango
(especially the politicians)
and the radio refuses
to be coherent

A Brahms sonata
is waffling up from
the garbage disposal
and the thunder is
plummeting through the
Oregon wilderness,
screeching like Big Foot
with a shovel jammed
up his anus



The Earth Is Exploding Where Lawrence Of Arabia Once Slept


where he fought
and fornicated

where he turned
his heart to blowing sand

blood lust
running through

his aristocratic veins

his blue eyes full of
the murderous

future



Doug Draime emerged as a presence in the small press and underground literary movement in Los Angeles in the late 1960's. Most recent books: "Rock 'n Roll Jizz" (Propaganda Press) and "Los Angeles Terminal: Poems 1971-1980" (Covert Press). Awarded PEN grants in 1987, 1991 and 1992. Nominated for several Pushcart Prizes in the last few years. He lives in the foothills of Oregon. Forthcoming, "More Than The Alley", a full-length collection form Interior Noise Press.
 
"A Stormy Night As The Electricity Goes On And Off" was first published in Zygote In My Coffee.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Ross Vassilev- Three Poems

everything but the floppy shoes

well, I’m unemployed
I don’t shower as often as I ought to
don’t brush my teeth as often as I ought to
I’m a sad, sad case in the middle of
nowhere America
and I’ve got no one to blame but myself (and my parents)
but all the same, it’s nice lying here in bed
this morning:
white sheets, white walls
a white ceiling with brown water stains
and the sun coming in through the windows
like Eternal Buddha
my friends think I’m crazy
and I suppose maybe I am
but I tell them this head is nothing more
than a half-empty box
(I like to think it’s purple on the inside)
and every once in a while
when some grunge falls out of it
I clean it up
email it to the editor of some magazine
it’s what I do best
all that I can do
so really,
it’s not such a bad life
afterall.



dogma

I’m a slacker
and a loser
and I like to stare at the clouds for hours
I read a lot of books
and don’t know anything at all
I like ladybugs
someone told me
I should put myself
in the hands of
God
but I’d rather be in the hand
of some high school cheerleader
I’d rather be a white birch
in the Russian forest
or a Chinese monk on pilgrimage
to India
and God is
wind chimes when a breeze picks up.



a taste of the Orient

the place had red Chinese lanterns
and a Chinese barmaid
I asked her
how much for a shot of tequila?
she said
fo’ dolla’s
it was dark
and the tequila burned a little
and the sunlight was coming in
from the street
it was just me and the barmaid
and no one else
with the bottles lined up
against the back wall
so that the whole thing looked like
some kind of altar
a bar is a place holy as any other
just without all the dogma
and other bullshit
I even thought I saw
Buddha
sitting under the red-and-blue neon
counting how many drinks
I’d had.

Monday, March 19, 2012

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.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

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.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

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
 

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

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.

Monday, March 12, 2012

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.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

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.





Friday, March 9, 2012

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.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

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.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

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.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

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.