The Place Where The Stars Are Buried by Lynn White

Greater stitchwort (Stellaria holostea)
Photograph by Evelyn Simak

First published in Midnight Circus, June 2016

I’m on my way to the place
where the stars are buried
under a roof of rain.
I won’t get lost.
I’m following the silver snail
trails and the muddy pools
with the little shimmers of spangles.
When I get there - to the place
where the stars are buried.
I shall dig a little, dig
just enough to let
a glimmer of light out.
Just enough to let
the love sparkle and
sizzle in the light
before it burns.

*****

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

Silver Baubles by Lynn White

Photo by Susanne Jutzeler from Pexels

First published in Cirrus, December 2018

The little girl loved the glass baubles
loved their shiny surfaces
that could catch the light
and shine it back
loved the fragility that
she was not allowed to touch.
The oldest ones were especially fragile
like old people, she thought, so easily broken.
They had been bought by her grandmother,
her old dead grandmother,
so old she had never known her.
Their colours had faded,
it happens with time
she was told.
The glossy paint had cracked and peeled away,
it happens with time,
the heat and dryness does it
like wrinkles and flaking skin
even here where cold and damp prevails,
yes, it happens with time,
even here.
But the baubles were still shiny
gleaming silver
underneath underneath their fading colours.
The old people she knew weren’t glossy
just wrinkled, dry and fragile.
She wondered when they would become silver.
She knew that just a touch could break a bauble
shatter them
so they no longer existed
just like her grandmother
and they other dead people.
She wondered if they became silver,
perhaps it was after they died.

*****

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

Celestial Freefalling by Stephen Mead

“In my dweems we fwy,” is a quote written on the cover of Joni Mitchell’s 1979 album “Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter”.  The cover also features Joni as an African American, a fact I did not realize until, years later, when I read a Musician magazine interview with Joni where the late great jazz musician, Charles Mingus, calls Joni “One nervy broad”, for pulling off such a racial pigmentation change.  I did an internet search attempting to locate where the quote “In my dweems we fwy,” originates but had no success.  It sounds like lines from Peter Pan or an old Hollywood romance such as “Now Voyager”.  The fact that I keep hearing it being it said by a voice which sounds like Tweety Bird though, causes the horizons of my mind to enlarge with cartoon balloon after balloon.  Here comes Bullwinkle bouncing with Rocky in a tickertape rain.

Flying, in concept and in reality, is pretty much like this for me anyway, an extension of dreamtime.  There is an expansion between my ears not unlike helium, but more sonorous, and deep tones are allowed entrance as a humming undercurrent which sustains the whole.  Is this the cerulean siren song which called to Da Vinci?  I admire his Icarus elegance, his locks flowing like Ganymede’s, and there must be such determination in his gaze, an angel’s ruth, even as the panic of plummeting begins.  If there is a crowd watching, does not awe turn to terror and sorrow, or is there only derision at the sight of feathers exploding like a plucked duster?  (Actually if I were Leonardo’s maid I too may be tempted to roll my eyes, thinking Mama Mia,  all those good goose down pillows gone to waste.)  Still, we have the meticulous drawings and notes in his journals to put a cork in more cynical speculations, and the fact that history proved his dreams right.  Not every human, let alone every artist, can say as much.

Lucky Leo.  It wouldn’t take Freud to figure out what’s at the crux of this fantasy. 

Oddly enough, while up in the air, I do not picture the mechanics of airplanes or copters at all, only the wonder of how something of substantial weight and mass can possibly defy gravity.  To me it truly is a suspension of disbelief. The clouds become blueprints that slowly fill with sepia.  I imagine newsreels of the Wright Brothers’ trials and errors, along with grainy footage of a regal Amelia Earhart and a gallant Charles Lindberg, waving to a sea of well-wishers.  My own art, at one time, had been obsessed with such a sense of the wondrous, the ideas of floating or falling, yet falling in such a way it was slow-mo and somewhat giddy.  One of these mural-size works, “Go Ahead, Now You Try”, which eventually became a short film, was filled with these airy themes:  wing walkers, acrobats balancing on chairs, sky divers riding parachute currents before a large sun-orange hot air balloon depicting two lovers. 

Chagall understood such need to be apart from the heaviness of earth, the weight of it, though I can also see the reason behind the thematic skies of a photographer like Robert Parke Harrison.  All is gray in his landscapes, his protagonist a tie-less man in black with a white shirt, an inventor of some sort creating machines that are a mixture of the organic (thistles and tumbleweeds), and mechanical wheels and propellers pulled from some endless scrap heap.  The world he lives in appears post-apocalyptic, but there is something very humane in the narratives, for this inventor, whether on unicycle or telephone wires, appears to be attempting flight, attempting to make progress out of chaos.

Lately my own flying dreams have taken on such dimensions. When younger and flying, always without the aid of machines, but just by using my arms, there was true ethereal exhilaration, and landing woke me with a bounce. In fact, in some of those visions there were even other mythic prehistoric beasts, Loch Ness Monster-shaped, also taking to the skies.   Now such dreams are rare, and should they occur it is usually due to plight as opposed to flight, the need to escape something which is simultaneously cryptic, sinister and yet mundane:  the drear of office work perhaps, or dim-lit grocery stores where zombie customers saunter with vacant hope of ever finding what they seek.

*****

A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer.  Since the 1990s he's been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online.  He is also grateful to have managed to keep various day jobs for the Health Insurance. In 2014 he began a webpage to gather various links to his published poetry in one place,
http://stephenmead.weebly.com/links-to/poetry-on-the-line-stephen-mead

Emma (Not by Jane Austen) by Alex Phuong

Emma Bovary by Helena Perez Garcia
from Flickr

During the fall semester at Brown University in 2017, a young woman named Emma had big dreams of becoming a Hollywood actress. Emma had a very interesting childhood given that her name was the same as many famous individuals in both literature and film. When Emma was a little girl, her favorite Disney movie was Beauty and the Beast (1991). Emma was a lot like Belle because they both loved to read. In fact, Emma was a Janeite because she loved the novel Emma by Jane Austen as well as admired Emma Thompson’s Oscar-winning screenplay in the 1995 version of Sense and Sensibility. Emma was also a fan of Emma Thompson’s work in films ranging from Howards End (1992) to her roles in the Harry Potter series.

Speaking of Harry Potter, Emma obviously loved Emma Watson, and Hermione Granger was Emma’s favorite character from J.K. Rowling’s series. Emma loved Emma Watson so much that she spent her entire spring break watching the 2017 remake of Beauty and the Beast. Emma had high hopes that Emma Watson would receive nominations for playing Belle during the 2018 awards season. In fact, Emma went to Brown University simply because Emma Watson was an alumna from that prestigious school!

Emma was also a huge fan of Emma Stone. She loved the film La La Land (2016), and thought that Mia was a very inspirational character. Emma was in her film class watching Birdman (2014) one day when “someone in the crowd” noticed her uncanny appearance to both Emma Watson and Emma Stone. That person was a casting director looking for a singer for his Broadway adaptation of La La Land. It was a funny coincidence, actually, because Emma had brown hair like Emma Watson, yet had the facial features of Emma Stone.  That someone in the crowd was definitely the person that Emma needed to know.

The casting director’s name was Ryan, and sounded a lot like Sebastian from The Little Mermaid (1989). Ryan asked Emma if she would be willing to audition for the role of Mia in his Broadway adaptation of La La Land. Emma agreed because she wanted to achieve the notoriety of the famous women who shared her name. Emma performed the song “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” for Ryan, and he was blown away. Emma went on to have a long and interesting career that was as “emmazing” as the lives of Emma Thompson, Emma Watson, Emma Stone, and Emma Woodhouse.

*****

Alex Andy Phuong graduated from California State University-Los Angeles with his Bachelor of Arts in English in 2015. He currently writes articles and film reviews online, and resides in Alhambra, CA, USA. His writing has appeared in The Bookends Review, Society of Classical Poets, and Wilderness House Literary Review #12/4.  The link to his movie review profile is Alex Phuong, Author at MovieBoozer

Nightmare by John Grey

Dhscommtech at English Wikipedia
[CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

It’s a mother clutching at her heart
all of a sudden,
dropping to the kitchen floor
and you’re suddenly
no more than an infant,
crawling across the floor,
trying to reach the one thing in the world
that offers affection and warmth.
Then, when you finally reach her,
you realize it’s not your mother at all,
but a stranger mumbling desperately,
“Call 911.”
More crawling,
to the phone this time,
but your tiny hands
can do no more than knock
the receiver off the hook.
For a few seconds,
you carry on a conversation with the dial-tone,
everything out of your mouth
mere garbled sounds.
The woman is dying.
You’re in a hopeless situation,
infancy one moment,
awake the next.
You press your hands against your head.
There’s someone dead in there.

*****

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dunes Review, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Thin Air, Dalhousie Review and failbetter.

Kate Winslet by Alex Phuong

Kate Winslet
GabboT [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]

This story was first published in Barking Sycamores in 2017.


On one Labor Day afternoon, while driving down a Revolutionary Road, a simple, all-American girl named Kate Winslet was searching for something to do for her summer vacation.  After driving for several hours, she saw a billboard with the headline, “TITANIC SAILS ONCE MORE!”  She hesitantly resisted the urge to buy tickets for a summer cruise because of her fear of drowning.  After stopping by Laguna Beach, she went into a library to check out a copy of her favorite novel, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.  Kate often identified with Marianne Dashwood because of their romantic sensibilities.  She also enjoyed Shakespeare, and her favorite fictional character from the Bard was Ophelia from Hamlet.  After returning home from the library, she became not just A reader, but The Reader.  As she read a book about Steve Jobs, she pondered what life would be like if she were to have Little Children.  She also feared Carnage because she wants to live happily ever after rather than suffer a miserable demise (which could have happened if she boarded that Titanic replica).  As night began to present itself, she went to bed while letting her mind expand with the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  Curiously, this simple young woman is still nothing like the famous British actress because the Hollywood legend has green eyes while Kate’s Irises were hazel.

*****

Alex Andy Phuong graduated from California State University-Los Angeles with his Bachelor of Arts in English in 2015. He currently writes articles and film reviews online, and resides in Alhambra, CA, USA. His writing has appeared in The Bookends Review, Society of Classical Poets, and Wilderness House Literary Review #12/4.  The link to his movie review profile is Alex Phuong, Author at MovieBoozer

1920 by DC Diamondopolous

previously published in Alpha Female Society

A ray of sun struck the copper’s badge and bounced off, lighting up the voting box inside H. L. Drugstore in me South Bronx Neighborhood.
Now washed and mended, I wore the same blood-splattered dress, patched at the cuff, tattered ‘round the collar, mud stains on the hem. It showed the scars from when we marched down Broadway, I holding a sign, The Vote For Equal Pay For Equal Work.
It had started a glorious spring day, fresh from a night of rain, splendid with the radiance of blooming cherry blossoms. Little sister Annie pestered to come along. I told her, “Stay home with the youngins. You’re too small and there might be trouble.” She says, “I’m big enough and I’m a comin.” And so she did, running along the sidewalk, keeping step with the march. Annie inherited the stubbornness that we McPhersons shared.
Hundreds marched. Me arms feeling the ache from holding the poster high above me head. Women clutched banners that stretched the Avenue. Coppers on horseback, coppers on foot, looking for agitation—someone stirrin’ the pot.
It did me heart good to protest among me own, knowing our numbers was a force to reckon with. Still an’ all, we had to keep going, every day, every spare moment spent on the vote.
A man outside Woolworth’s shouted, “Only vote I give you is a kick in the knickers.” Someone threw a rock. Glass shattered. Horses reared. Men broke through the lines. Big oaf of a bloke grabbed me sign, slammed it hard on me head, he did. I fell to the ground. “Lucy!” Annie’s voice had the shock in it. I sprawled in the street until I forced meself up. I looked ‘round for me hat. I got to me feet and when I did something hit the back of me neck, and I tumbled. Slumped on Broadway, staring at the buildings, the raging men, determined women, the world and all its unfairness swirling then dimmed.
Sirens, distant on the rim of me twilight, wailed, coming as a call to get meself up. On hands and knees, I was, when a copper kicked me in the chest. With great pain, I grabbed his ankle and raked short broken nails into his flesh. He shrieked. I rolled a ways over. Stood. For the sake of me sisters, I held up me fists like Jack Dempsey, but before I could sock ‘em in the kisser two other coppers pulled at me shoulders, squeezed meaty hands around me breasts. I kicked. Sunk me teeth into their fingers. Their red Irish faces flushed with the memory of booze, their breath foul as the steerage our family sailed in across the sea.
They threw me into the paddy.
Father brought us here after mum died, for a new start, a better life. Working in a factory twelve hours a day, no windows, low pay, bosses forcing themselves on me. If I’d a had no father or brothers, I might a hated all men. But I and me family could eat. Back home, how can you march with an empty belly? So I wrap hopes and dreams and those of me family in the red, white, and blue.
From inside the paddy, I looked over me shoulder for Annie. The riot swallowed her whole. “Lucy!” But I heard her voice shrill as a whistlin’ tea kettle.
Across the aisle from where I was sittin’ a woman with a gash on her cheek bled something fierce. I ripped off me sleeve, dropped to me knees, and pressed it against the stunned woman’s cheek. Through her tears, I saw eyes that kindled rebellion. The woman beside her began to sing, “Let Us all Speak Our Minds.” The others, meself included, joined in the anthem. A copper in the front of the paddy banged his billy club on the grill and yelled, “Shut-up!” With no mind to the brute, we continued to sing. Louder. On the floor, a poster encouraged us with the words, Never Give Up. Our voices united, overpowered our fears, until he unlocked the gate and struck the nearest woman with his wooden stick.
Annie appeared, her thin arms waving as she ran alongside the wagon. I yelled through the bars, “Go home.” I, the eldest of six to me parents’ brood, demanded a say in their raising and sending me brothers off to war.
Head aching, chest hurting, hair falling ‘round me shoulders, me hat trampled somewhere in the fight. To jail I’d go. A criminal. A dangerous woman. I smiled at the notion and the girl who held me cuff to her head nodded as if reading me mind.
The wagon’s siren split traffic with a blaring fright as we drove down Broadway and turned a corner. The Harlem River glimpsed between outdoor markets, shops, and eateries. Fear starting to get the best ‘o me.
The jail full of suffragettes, it had no where to lock us up. So they let us go.
A year passed since the brawl as I wait to vote. I look into the face of the women around me. Pride. A quiet jubilance. The change in our lives happening in this tiny drab storefront.
I think of the women who fought before us not having the chance to live this day. Do they know? I reckon they do.
I want to believe in something bigger now. That brotherhood will find the compassion to form a union for all of mankind.
I’m next.
A copper stands beside the ballot box, protecting the case with a scowl and a gun on his hip.
He motions me forward.
I keep me head high as I stride to the glass box. I write me vote in big letters and slip the paper into the slat as if planting something that one day will bloom.
I thank the good Lord for this day. Knowing that so shall life get better for me, it will get better for all.

Hoping & Suns by Fabrice Poussin

Hoping

Suns

*****

Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and many other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications. 

Floodlit Poems by L. Ward Abel Out Today

Cover photograph by L. Ward Abel

L. Ward Abel, poet, composer, teacher, retired lawyer, lives in rural Georgia, has been published hundreds of times in print and online, and is the author of one full collection and eleven chapbooks of poetry, including Jonesing for Byzantium (UK Authors Press, 2006), American Bruise (Parallel Press, 2012), Cousins Over Colder Fields (Finishing Line Press, 2013), Little Town gods (Folded Word Press, 2016), A Jerusalem of Ponds (erbacce-Press, 2016), Digby Roundabout (Kelsay Books, 2017), and The Rainflock Sings Again (Unsolicited Press, 2019).

Floodlit
L. Ward Abel

Beakful, © 2019

ISBN: 9780244816636
96 pages

$7 buy it from the printer's website

****

Tranquility Base

It was July 1969 down on Lake Sinclair.
Outside was a night as loud as Mombasa.
Inside the astronauts came down a blurry
black and white ladder, likewise the old TV.

My crewcut years then at ten were just
a clutching of books near two-hundred-year-old nesting-oaks.
I lurked at the edge of reddish water and miles-dark
hardwood

under yin/yang skies. Later in that cabin
I tried to sleep maybe channel astronaut
dreams, but settled on the hawk
dreaming floodlit over the boathouse,
her shadow pouring out to find me.

The Trip Back Home by John Grey

Look at that,
kids he went to school with,
pumping gas at Andy’s Auto,
bussing tables at Denny’s.
And there’s Chad,
twenty years added to his face
when it should have only been ten,
his nose already red with booze
and scars on his chin
from his latest crackup.
Dale’s sweeping streets.
Ernie’s bouncing off the running board
of the trash pickup truck.
At least, Bobby can afford a pickup…
just not four good tires
And Lucy sure looks cute in that pink uniform,
with Bert’s Diner stitched into the pocket.
Veronica’s pushing a pram.
Can’t tell if there’s one or two in there.
She was as smart as the teacher
when she was in school.
He’s only home for a few days,
staying at his mom’s house,
catching up with friends.
But how do you catch up with kids
who’ve fallen so far behind?
Mostly by keeping how well he’s doing
to himself.
So he has no college degrees.
No six figure job in the city.
No snazzy apartment overlooking the river.
He’s learned you can go home again.
But only if someone’s willing
to take your place.

*****

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dunes Review, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Thin Air, Dalhousie Review and failbetter.

All That Glitter by Lynn White

Photograph by Quincemedia from Pixabay

First published in ‘All That Glitters’, Silver Apples, Issue 10, 2018

It glitters
like gold.
But is it
gold
or base
metal
being worked on
by an alchemist..
undergoing
transformation,
perhaps
with a touch
of magic,
with an elixir
of immortality,
an illusion.
Or perhaps
base oil
transformed
to
sparkly
plastic glitter
with
all too real
immortality.
Glittering,
littering
with
everlasting life,
all that glitter.

*****

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

The Janitor’s Art by Danny Barbare

Mop & Bucket by Phil Parker from Flickr

Whether
a
broom
or
mop

as
this
is
it

a
work
of
art.

Sunday Afternoon by DS Maolalai

Goldfish by John O'Sullivan from Flickr

and all day
music plays
and all day there are poems
and all
day, light
through the blinds
striking like piano keys,
brash and loud as crockery dropping.

sometimes you feel like a goldfish,
satisfied in its bowl,
boxed off from unnecessary strife.
gods with red wings rise on horizons
and scorch the earth
red in search of prayer,
people go mad in the streets and rant about angels,
death and everything in the next century,
all outside,
all very much
away -

sometimes you just lie in bed
scratch your belly
and eat cheese crackers.

*****

DS Maolalai has been nominated for Best of the Web and twice for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019)

The Silence by Bobbi Sinha-Morey

Image by Ralf Kunze from Pixabay

In the out-of-sync silence
I watched in an aura of
wariness my drunken
mother alone in her room,
ashes from the tip of her
cigarette falling carelessly
in a shallow bowl of heirloom
china, an ugly dark hair on
her chin that stubbornly
stayed no matter how much
she shaved. Years of growing
up I'd seen her let out her
inner rage on me and my
father, leeching any happiness
that had clung to my bones,
an embalming of the spirit
that made me want to hide
away and not be known,
so used to my mute tongue,
too afraid to tell anyone.
It was only today, at this
time, my dreams had knitted
into a dark tie having grown
up with the belief that all
fears are permanent; that,
like bone fractures, they
would heal but leave a
hairline shadow.

*****

Bobbi Sinha-Morey lives in Central Point, Oregon, in the U.S.A. Her poetry has recently appeared in Vita Brevis, Cascadia Rising Review, Woods Reader, and Lost and Found: Tales of Things Gone Missing.

To the Finish Line by Fabrice Poussin

Finish Line by Andrew Hurley

In the thick crowd of suits and heels, she runs
the shadow is relentless on her tracks
imprint of the minutes passed on the asphalt
what is she trying to evade in the early mist?

Eyes transfixed on the vision of words to come
impervious to the cries for help
her glide continues in a vertiginous slalom
she feels a chill upon her fragile nape.

So much impatience, so little time to spare
and they pursue the beloved aura
in their spring dresses of flowers and love
she knows not to stop or slow for anyone.

Where does the path end, when will she find her peace
for the moment the unspoken plea remains unheard
as an apparition she floats without unanchored
while below cries beg for her to give solace at last.

*****

Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and many other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications. 

The Greatest Clown on Earth by Susan P. Blevins

Pennywise - Jim Nix

Each morning he drags himself out of his sleepless bed,
already wearing the face of an angry primate, and with
bulging belly waddling before him, he lurches into the bathroom,
and the start of his daily ritual.
“You’re too old for this shit,” he grumbles each day,
scowling into his bathroom mirror.
He’s finding it harder and harder to hide his growing insanity,
though he keeps trying.  His washed-out blue eyes peer
back myopically at him from his ravaged face, which looks
as though it’s dissolving and subsiding, like those damn
glaciers scientists keep talking about on TV.
He shrugs his massive shoulders and reaches for his
makeup.  He’s always thought orange was quite fetching,
and made him look tan and buff, but now he’s not so sure.
The hair routine comes next:  the careful comb-over to
hide his baldness.  “Who am I kidding?” he mutters,
“But I will make the whole world laugh one day.”  He
has not yet accepted the truth that the whole world already
laughs at him, but with scorn and derision, not good humor.
He suits up and chooses his favorite tie, very long and very
red, his power tie, a talisman he needs more and more,
and sets off to watch Fox and Friends, before heading down
into the Oval Office for another day’s performance.

A Portrait of Wilbur by JD DeHart

Sbrools at the English language

Just as one poet
once wrote about a last
duchess, so did the poet
write about the first Wilbur.

The brown clothing, smell
of moth balls, scent of age
of rows of books that Wilbur
rested within.

You have to wonder –
did he read all those books,
are they in progress, or are they
simply stacked like a protective
barrier, never opened?

Empty glass bottles
that suggest some dismay.

A clip of speech that
played with a Southern accent,
these days
it’s hard to find someone
named Wilbur.

It Was the Nineteen Fifties by John Grey

1950s Gloucester, MA Family
by Glenn from West Virginia, USA
[CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]

No sin.
Crewcuts for the boys and the lawns.
Underwear hidden from plain sight.

Busy church.
Busy business.
Everyone younger
the image of everybody older.

Marriage for life.
Religion for that and more.

So Samuel Marsh
battered his wife to death
with a tire iron.

He never laid a hand
on anybody else’s wife.

*****

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Midwest Quarterly, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Hawaii Review and the Dunes Review.

The Last Suitcase by Holly Day

I watched him float away like a single tuft of dandelion fluff
out of my arms and out of the house and into his own life
and then the door closed and I was alone. There was not one moment
in the past twenty years that I thought about this day
without thinking I’d be filled with relief, and joy, and the feeling
of a job well-done, or at least adequately done—

I was not prepared for the grief, the oppressive constant knot in my heart
the nagging feeling that there was so much I should have done
so many things I should have said
so many missed opportunities to let my son know
how wonderful he made everything for me
how I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now that he’s gone.

*****

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Plainsongs, The Long Islander, and The Nashwaak Review. Her newest poetry collections are A Perfect Day for Semaphore (Finishing Line Press),  In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), I'm in a Place Where Reason Went Missing (Main Street Rag Publishing Co.), The Yellow Dot of a Daisy (Alien Buddha Press), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), and  Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing).

Riding My Emu by John Kaniecki

Allen Ginsburg
Moloch was the matriarch of madness
A male giving birth?
Are we not the byproduct of the Earth?
Cancer says the doctor with hands trembling
A scary diagnosis resembling
The final, Final Solution
Take the butcher’s knife and cut a slice
Shall I spew forth a mouth of sperm?
If you want to get the big fish
To eat on your fine china dish
You need to use the correct worm
And for the final time
I am not Jesus Christ
Though I shall be crucified with my only crime
Telling the truth
And warning the youth
Not to enlist
RESIST!
I’ll be riding my emu
Cause I’m one cool cat
I’ll be riding my emu
Provided I don’t get too fat
But the blubber blues
Will be diffracted with strict refinement
When I go into solitary confinement
There with my Bible
And my sweet imagination
Contemplating salvation
And every vixen lustfully laden with sin
Spirit wrestles with carnality
Double duality
It’s true! It’s true?
Black can be white if you just look at it right

Crepuscular by John Grey

Brocken Inaglory
[CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

Such an odd name
for the owls that hunt
the twilight rodents.

Or the woodcock
digging for earthworms.
Or the nighthawk
snaffling insects
on the wing.

Crepe is crisp and thin,
almost invisible,
And muscular
providing the strength, the tenacity,
to kill.

And all in the time
that is not quite anything.

Not bright.
Not dark.

Just a strange word
hungry for meaning.

*****

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Midwest Quarterly, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Hawaii Review and Roanoke Review.   

Being and Nothingness by Gary Beck

Max Klinger
From the Cycle "A life": Back into Nothingness
(Opus VIII, Plate 15/15)

The sins I have committed
hopefully will die with me,
yet if there is an afterlife
where sins are burnt and purged away
I must endure cleansing,
perhaps not as long as others
for I wasn’t the worst,
non-comforting knowledge
that must be reconciled.

I can’t imagine heaven,
Elysian Fields, Edenic dreams,
and if they were real,
they wouldn’t be for me.
If there’s only nothingness
I surely can’t conceive
of the absence of something.
So my remaining option
is to enjoy as much as I can
before the final conclusion.

*****

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director. He has 14 published chapbooks. Feast or Famine and other one act-plays will be published by Wordcatcher Publishing. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of magazines. He lives in New York City.

My dreamy manifesto under the starry sky – comet-ward by Pawel Markiewicz

Attention: This manifesto has in itself a magic power and it can finally refute the communist manifesto (1847/48) and its successors in the form of communist states.

It burns a peaceful campfire!

I am part of the pink eternity.
I enchant the poetic stars.
I dream with ghosts of melancholy.
I am a magician of dawn.
My wing is called Apollo.
I'm so enchanted so dreamy.
I am a sky dreamer.
I am shrouded  in the most beautiful enthusiasm.
My dream enchants the beautiful world.
There is a magic dream in my wings.
My wings can do magic.
I like my dreams.
My dream is hotter than feeling.
Philosophical thoughts are waiting for me.
Philosophical sparks shimmer at me.
My philosophy is infinity.
I am in love with the infinity of politics.
I like a druidic fire.
I want to become a druid priest.
Modern druids beautify my existence.
An eternal spark rests in my poetries.
I am spiritualized thanks to poetry.
In politics you can be poetic.
I never quarrel with muses.
I fly in pairs like muses.
My wing would need starry rays.
With beautiful sounds fulfilled my dream of melancholy.
Poetic moment enriches my soul.
There is an Osiris' chalice in my soul.
My friend Loreley is a philosopher like me.
In tender tears my magic life takes place.
I sometimes quarrel with tears of finiteness.
I would build a school for Druids.
The imagination unfolds in the moon.
I adore  Osiris forever.
My friend Osiris likes the original beauty.
In my chalice there is  Osiris´ soul.
I fly to the land of Osiris.
I write a legend to the Osiris.
I drink a dew of eternity.
In the dew, I can refresh my soul like muses.
I warm myself in a gentle dew.
I cool my wings in the magic dew.
In the dew fell my little shooting star.
Ambrosia is eternal for my sake.
In Ambrosia I feel infinitely beautiful magic.
I love to perpetuate this ambrosia.
An idea about the ambrosia is waiting for me.
My tender thought must be enchanted by Ambrosia.
I, sitting, wait for spiritualized moments.
I sit there as if I were a musical angel.
I philosphere as if an angelic muse had touched me.
In the wind, my moment becomes like star-shaped existence.
This touch reflects my eternity.
The tender poetry become  my temple.
In the most beautiful stamp of feeling I belong to you.
I can love all the fantasies of the dawn.
I'll show you my freedom of mindlessness.
I like to collect colored shooting stars of the angels.

*****

Pawel Markiewicz was born 1983 in Poland (Siemiatycze) . He published his English haikus as well as short poems in the best literary magazines of world such as: Ginyu (Tokio) , Atlas Poetica (USA) or The Cherita (UK) . Recently he has published some poem in Tajmahal Review (India) and Better Than Starbucks (USA) . He published furthermore his poems and prosa in Internet: Blog Nostics - to wit his mystical flash- the Druid...about fungi... 

Expectations by Lynn White

Sand Castles by Jerry

I had never been to the seaside.
I knew what to expect, though.
I had a book about it.
There were lots of pictures of rock pools
and the strange creatures living there.
My favourites were the hermit crabs.
I was looking forward to those the most.
I had a little bucket to collect them in.

But there were no rock pools,
at this seaside.
Just flat sand with a thin distant line
of cold grey sea.
Why?
No one said.

I found some shells
to put in my bucket.
I liked the tiny pink ones best.
But most were broken
and not worth collecting.
Why?
No one said.

No shells, no hermit crabs, but
they showed me how to put damp sand
into my miniature bucket.
with my miniature spade
and how to pat it down
and tip it out to make ‘sand pies’.
I was supposed to like doing this.
Why?
No one said.

They gave me some paper flags
on thin wooden sticks.
I could stick them in
the top of my sand pies.
I was supposed to like doing this.
Why?
No one said.

I thought I’d save up my flags
until I’d climbed the mountain
at my auntie’s.
When I got to the top
I’d arrange them into my initials
so everyone would know I’d been there.
I started to practice this.
But they said the mountain
was a slag heap, not a mountain
and therefore out of bounds.
Why?
No one said.

We stayed on the beach a long time.
Then we went to a toy shop.
My father bought me a doll
with real hair, they said.
But it was made of nylon.
I called her Gloria.
That was the best bit.
but nothing was
as it had been
inside my head.


First published in Silver Birch Press, Beach and Pool Series, 2016

*****

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

Confessions of the Ice Beast by JD DeHart

Remnant by Andrew McFarlane

It's tough being
on the outs with the whole
world, but doable.

It's even tougher being
a creature of ice
because all eventually melts.

Social media and surface
relationships with past lives
offer little solace.

A striking resemblance to
seasonal claymation characters
is the only saving grace.

One has to get through the
holidays somehow, after all.


first published in Pyrokinection

*****

JD DeHart is a writer and teacher.  He has a new book of poems, A Five-Year Journey, available from Dreaming Big Publications.

Summer, Lower East Side by John Grey

Cliff Dwellers, oil on canvas by George Bellows (1913)

Hot as a forge, a searing wind swivels
up Avenue A, corkscrews the laundry
dangling between windows,
swerves in and out of the slug-like traffic -
clouds thicken into
the wistful decay of Barney's Pool Room
peopled with genuine tough guys
chalking up cues, bumming smokes off
each other, feinting the usual punches
while they grit their teeth over old grudges,
rub balding skulls where hats used to sit -
East River bridges soar high and remote,
the deep tan of the surface more the style of
the homeless who gather by banks wainscoted in foam
one died in the last war and yet here he is,
another figured the big money would come
to him someday - he's still waiting -
another was married once,
is now blacklisted by his own life -
in the quiet light of a bronze moon,
they work on forgetting their names,
summer air like a steel staircase
spiraling in a neon-washed majesty
to the cheap darkness of the sky's upper floor;
coughs, health on the wane,
handsomeness and beauty
traded in for pigeon shit,
it's drinks all round at Lenny's bar
for anyone who never was.
junk oozing up from the shadows,
city takes its medicine, one arm at a time;
subway rattling underfoot,
kid bouncing a basketball on glass,
barges hauling, guys brawling,
the first drops of rain -
so glad they could make it.

*****

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Harpur Palate and Columbia Review with work upcoming in the Roanoke Review, the Hawaii Review and North Dakota Quarterly.