January 2016 | poetry
Bones of the trees
are showing now,
the terrible light.
Darkness is all
the cold holds, which
shivers out of sight.
The wind carries
on with sadness,
yet leaves no promise.
We hope for more
at summer’s end.
All we have is this.
by Tom Montag
Tom Montag is most recently the author of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013. He is a contributing writer at Verse-Virtual and in 2015 was the featured poet at Atticus Review (April) and Contemporary American Voices (August). Other poems are found at Hamilton Stone Review, The Homestead Review, Little Patuxent Review, Mud Season Review, Poetry Quarterly, Provo Canyon Review, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere.
January 2016 | poetry
Becoming Aware of the Tide
Just today I feel older
Driving to the vet
Driving 17 miles for a hat I left behind
at a monthly meeting
Listening to a folk-rock album
awash in distracted serenity
Ebbing as soon
as it draws attention
Coleridge Stares at the Sea in Search of Star Ratings
We accept sponges
as they line up along our shores
Hate the sand-
glasses up, lying for the sun
Hate the strain-
bags happy to gulp burn
Melt over mogul diamonds buried
deep enough to require faith
by Mark Danowsky
Mark Danowsky’s poetry has appeared in Alba, Cordite, Grey Sparrow, Mobius, Shot Glass Journal, Third Wednesday and other journals. Mark is originally from the Philadelphia area, but currently resides in North-Central West Virginia. He works for a private detective agency and is Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal.
January 2016 | poetry
Quietly with sly energy,
it circles a black hole
in this jungled universe.
feral mind feline creeping
pauses in pursuit, too ready
to nap another day away.
Oh this mind like the attic, bearer
of all rejects: artwork, furniture,
broken toys, cobwebs, dust motes
claim stale air.
Emotion is turned off, more a leaky pipe
for some replacement part
now on backorder, while the mind
Remains confused, eschews
uncorked sadness, challenges
action, the what if and what is
as it appears in the present.
The cat’s tail like an antenna picks up
a mouse dead behind the old
sewing machine table, stalks its remains
Through a packed jungle of unwanted
leftovers; none show rhyme nor reason.
Could that mind, more likely instinct
Than feelings lie among that pile
of castoffs already in play
between two large cat paws?
by Lee Landau
This poet writes with raw honesty about family events, those dysfunctional backstories. She shelters emotion from the snowy winters of Minnesota that spark her imagination. She writes about obsessions, both large and small that tumble through her poems. Publications include BlueStockings Magazine at Brown University, Wisconsin Review, Breath and Shadow, Avalon Literary Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Ice Box Journal, Rockhurst Review, Vending Machine Press, The Monarch Review, Else Where Lit.
January 2016 | poetry
Moon jelly in the sea noodle
Shimmer of flying fish morning
Laughs to itself the sky has landed
Along the beach water dripping off its hair
Sometimes the world might
Come in a little ahead of the game
Today it looks like it was going to rain
Airwaves change a seagull into a musket ball
The lovely girl I’m too old & fat for
Sets her halo down
Next to her umbrella
It must get mighty rainy in heaven
& there’s still a star in the sky
A little pinkish around the edges
Gotta change this reality
Hold onto life by its tables & chairs
Typhoon voices too loud to be heard
Words bouncing around in the back of my mind
Rainfall rattles the windowshades
The wind seems laboring
Up a long flight of stairs
A car horn honks my name
The cannonade of an endless heart
A new window has opened
Spider webs are forming
The ceiling is falling
The Eiffel tower in miniature
Infrared balloon bubbling
Between the starfish high
In the mountains
& what only time will tell
The world loves itself in a special way
A man doesn’t have to worry about
The sunlight on how it is. The shadow
Of the door swung its shadow. She kind of
Knew something was going to happen
It was a ruby chandelier shot thru a wineglass
Falling back into empty spaces
Handwriting too indecipherable
To remain undecoded
A book too complicated
To remain unfinished
Bricks ripped away
In the underground restaurant
To make it seem more rustic
There is a solidity
Even in dreams
With its last breath the mountain
Yodels down the ravine
Nothing but rock formations
Shaped like cathedral spires.
by Kurt Cline
Kurt Cline is Associate Professor of English and World Comparative Literature, National Taipei University of Technology. His full-length book of poetry, Voyage the Sun, was published by Boston Poet Press in 2008. Poems and stories have appeared, most recently, in BlazeVOX, Danse Macabre, Shotglass Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, HuesoLoco, Apocrypha and Abstractions, Black Scat, and Clockwise Cat. Scholarly articles have appeared in Anthropology of Consciousness; Concentric, Beatdom Literary Journal; and Comparative Civilizations and Cultures.
January 2016 | fiction
…they try all the avenues, all the dusty streets, all the leafy parks, the houses in the better parts of the town, but they’ll not get me, they’ll not find me, they don’t know, how to do, how to do what they try to do, they fail, they always fail, it is I who knows, I have a map you see, a map of the whole town, all its nooks and crannies, I know the formula, the places to go and how to get there, despite everything they will fail, oh I look forward to it, I rub my hands at the thought of it, it will be quick when the time comes, I really cannot wait, but they will try, they will try anything, mostly it will be their trying, not my succeeding, oh I know that, and they do too, they know it is pointless, it will fail, they will try though, they always do, or do not, I mean they always fail, they won’t find me no matter where they go, no matter what they do, through leafy parks and dusty streets and oily roads, of tar and sand and stone and crisp corners in the lines along the sky, through small idle windows in red brick, no, they won’t find me, no, I know, you see I can tell from here, I can see them, they cannot see me, only they think of me, hiding the words, it gets them thinking I know, I know all they can try, they try this as much as they like, I don’t mind, I am patient, it is they that are in the hurry, it is always, there is no end to it…
by Martin Keaveney
Martin Keaveney’s recent fiction includes ‘The Rainy Day’ in the anthology Small Lives (Poddle Publications), ‘Last Order’ in Crannog and ‘A New Freedom’ in Gold Dust magazine with work forthcoming in Agave Magazine. His flash fiction piece ‘Laugh’ will appear in Apocrypha and Abstractions magazine in March. He has a B.A. in English and Italian and an M.A. in English (Writing) from NUI, Galway, Ireland. He is currently a PhD candidate at NUIG, 2014-18 where he is researching the John McGahern archive and also writing a novel as part of the course.
