April 2016 | nonfiction
I found myself at deaths door. Looking up at the reflection of the stars that mirrored an image of what I once thought was my life. It seemed that violence followed me, or was it that I have been chasing it all along. Maybe the fact is that I enjoyed its company. It was my way of escape into the dark realms of the other side of me. But I was trapped and I wanted to get out. How is it that I fought with everything inside of me but nothing was good enough? I became helpless, hopeless, and distraught.
I was on a path of destruction and damage consumed me. Every part of me. And nobody was here to save me. I laid at the bottom of the river with eyes wide open watching the world pass me by. Surrounded by unfamiliar faces in unfamiliar places.
A part of me could still smile, though this was extremely faint. Is this smile a reminder of life that still lives within me, or is this insanity?
I cried out for help, and no one came, no one heard, and no one could see. Everyone around me lacked the capacity to relate to my situation. Or, maybe no one gave a damn.
I laid there completely lifeless. Tears filled the air bubbles that offered hope, a second chance, a comforter, a hand. One to reach out into the water and grab me. That’s all I wanted. One hand.
Paralyzed with fear and bound to the part of me that I, myself could not understand.
I needed pulled out!
The water from the river quickly consumed the spaces in my lungs reserved for air. All my sorrows, pains, and hurt left me as I slowly and dreadfully suffocated. It was at that moment that I felt free. I no longer suffered from the infirmary.
I laid there eyes wide open at the bottom of the river.
Latorra Killebrew
Latorra Killebrew is a new and aspiring writer. She enjoys composing free verse narrative poems along with free verse shorter poems.
April 2016 | poetry
You grow a beard, check the mirror,
notice you are forty years old, the next
morning, you shave it off, find you are
sixty. But life is like that, suddenly
everyone you know is dying and they
still visit with your back turned to them.
One day, you took the school bus
and you earned a gold star for answering
the last question right. Now, the nurses
on night duty ask you something which
you can’t open your mouth and respond to.
All you know is that someone switched
off the light and you don’t know how.
Lisa Zou
Lisa Zou is a student in Arizona. Her writing has been recognized by The Poetry Society of UK and the National YoungArts Foundation. Her work has been published by the Sierra Nevada Review.
April 2016 | poetry
Let the bombs fall
Let the princes seize power
I’m too tired to stop them
I’m too weary to care
I’ve eliminated evolution from my own ambitions
It’s a bad day
When you can no longer dance
To your own tune
For sophistication has suffocated in the ashes of the banal
And trepidation has triumphed
When we were up against the big dogs
And charity lacked the right tone to spur us
To stand up and be counted down
Since all that was needed was the compliance of good people
For the slaughter of countless millions
Because we’d forgotten the math
In our assumption that truth will out
And our shelving of responsibility
When the cutlass is drawn and barbarians
Are through the gates
Hacking at your ankles
With the merciless stupidity of impatient humans
Josef Krebs
Josef Krebs’ poetry appears in Burningword Literary Journal, Agenda, Bicycle Review, Calliope, Mouse Tales Press, The Corner Club Press, The FictionWeek Literary Review, and Crack the Spine. A short story has been published by blazeVOX and a chapbook of his poems will be published soon by Etched Press. He’s written three novels, five screenplays, and a book of poetry. His film was successfully screened at Santa Cruz and Short Film Corner of Cannes film festivals. The past seven years he’s been working as a freelance writer for Sound&Vision magazine having previously worked at the magazine for 15 years as a staff writer and editor.
April 2016 | poetry
Swing
Spilt and splashed down
here in the low life,
wild electric blue
blanketed eyes,
ham cameo role on
the gallows pole,
wrapped up whole
in the scarf of the sky,
open closet of bones
sounds a wind chime,
while a barbed wire
snare smokes a lung,
watch me dance on
hair trigger corrections,
plunge from life’s
unsolicited tongue.
PLATEAU
Given the high percentage
of supernatural compression
during the inception of a
catalytic chemical relationship,
why do we act so surprised when
the alcohol makes us hungover,
the cigarettes make us wheeze
and the chocolate makes us fat?
Why do we act so surprised when
the froth and fizz subsides and
reality staggers through the door
out of breath, plonks on the bed
kicks off its smelly old work
boots and gasps, ‘Christ, this
fucking Honeymoon is killing me!’
Lindsay McLeod
Lindsay McLeod trips over the horizon every morning. He has won several prizes and awards and stuff for poetry and short fiction and published his first co-authored poetry collection, My Almost Heart, in 2015. He currently writes on the sandy Southern edge of the world, where he watches the sea and the sky wrestle for supremacy at his letterbox. He prefers to support the underdog. It is presently an each way bet.
April 2016 | poetry
One Winter Night
after Mark Strand
My breath rose like a ghostly cloud into the air,
dispersing particles of me, invisible envoys
that would remain after I was gone,
marking my passage though no one would see.
The moon was a white slip, mute witness,
hanging high in a sullen wintry sky.
The street was silent, snow frosting
pavements, the front yards of the houses —
houses clinging to their warmth against the cold,
hosting domestic lives within their walls.
Not a soul stood by a window looking out.
I was tempted to stay outside, to embrace
night’s immensity, its indifferent
domain, I was tempted to walk away into it,
into an unscripted future with unknown
demands, but only for a moment, shivering,
the notion a whimsy, a flight of fantasy,
before I climbed the front steps,
icy hands turning the key to unlock the door,
returning me to my chosen life,
my chores, my children, my wife.
The Cognitive Dissonance Factories
Oh, how we have refined our techniques,
are refining them still, all for our production line,
churning out item after item, each one
individually tailored with our special mix
of empowerment and brutality, a little terror
here, a little deprivation there,
some brainwashing, some kicking of
severed heads, and promises, oh promises
of redemption, of a better world for believers,
of death to the infidels, of virgins
for martyrs, but let’s start with the children
and the messages they carry
in their brutalized hearts,
the future we are making embedded
within them, all our invisible suicide vests,
let’s start there where our immortality can blossom,
can bloom in their childish chests
and fear can grip the world.
The Mentor
for Jan Beatty
The mentor is so much more than herself —
she is her own reward:
she is wizard, prospector, pirate, conjurer,
maze of mirrors.
She practices rites of levitation and alchemy,
casts spells, holds students in her thrall.
What treasures come from this cannot be foreseen:
gold leaf on the Buddha,
sparkling raiment, cloudbursts,
citadels of delight. What she begins
takes on a life of its own,
fizzing trajectories of fire crackers
lighting up the dark. She knows
there is no greater reward than this,
her face illuminated in such light.
David Ades
David Adès is a Pushcart Prize nominated Australian poet living in Pittsburgh since 2011. He has been a member of Friendly Street Poets since 1979. He is the author of “Mapping the World” (Friendly Street Poets / Wakefield Press, 2008) commended for the Anne Elder Award 2008, and the chapbook “Only the Questions Are Eternal” (Garron Publishing, 2015). David was a volunteer editor of the Australian Poetry Members Anthology “Metabolism”. His poems have appeared widely in Australia and the U.S. In 2014 David was awarded the inaugural University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize and was also shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize.
