April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
A man who confessed to being insane enough
a man who confessed to being insane enough
to live with beasts. that’s not fair to the beasts.
what he meant was human beings.
you could tell because he was obsessed with fire
rising between the trees, & there’s no beast
who comprehends this as obsessable— it is to be fled.
so he meant human beings. in any case,
he wasn’t the only prick in the world insane enough
to do what he confessed to, but we all brag in different
cadences; mostly he just makes me think: so what? &
beautiful… that’s beautiful…
i’ll tell you what: we only suffer
long enough to die alive. that’s all.
that’s enough reason to be insane. i, for my part, still prefer
beastly people to human beings, the living to the dead.
by Steven Fregeau
Here & Now
The age of silked pimps
Has ended; the age of the thug
Has begun.
The proof is in
The uneven thumping upstairs,
The angry shouts,
A fallen window,
Footsteps stamping down the ceiling plaster,
A broken bottle,
A slammed door unevenly shuddering back open into the hall,
A man’s feet on the stairs,
His jeans & Tshirt blurring through the December bushes,
His beater car peeling off,
& her weeping in the room above my bed
As the muffled radio pants for breath in the bathroom.
A cat peers in my window
& I throw a sock at it
Because it flirts with skunks
& the summer stink lingers
Like the smell of an unfaithful wife.
It is Christmastime & I have no work.
I hear the worst of it in the daytime.
Everyone else is at work.
They have families & ambitions of love.
Sometimes love isn’t enough.
Sometimes it is enough that the radio upstairs goes silent.
Sometimes the thugs
Make sense,
& that truly does hurt.
by Steven Fregeau
Steven lives in Canton, OH and enjoys red wines, whiskeys, art, poetry, music, etc., and time spent at dive bars talking to people who manage to get by in life somehow (neighbors). College was the biggest mistake he ever made successfully. Oh, well.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Her laughter escalated
into muted hysteria,
lasting a second too long,
like an unfortunate accident,
a gasp, an inhalation
with throat muscles constricting,
breasts heaving,
shoulders shaking.
A moment of mirth
escaped unawares,
triggered by happenstance,
initially apologized for,
then later
subtly savored.
by Gary Glauber
Gary Glauber is a poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. His works have received multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. In 2013, he took part in Found Poetry Review’s Pulitzer Remix Project. He champions the underdog to the melodic rhythms of obscure power pop. His collection, Small Consolations, is coming from The Aldrich Press in 2015.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Getting to know you
How do you feel about thunderstorms?
I realize I have no idea how you’d answer.
My cheeks burn;
the thunder cracks;
it must be a sign.
I miss a lover I don’t know
and the thunder is judging me.
Have you ever
tried to write a poem
and the poem won’t write
but its lines keep insisting themselves to you?
I’m being silly.
It’s storming and I’m blushing and
I don’t know you
but I know you don’t write.
The thunder snorts
and the poem about you keeps insisting itself to me.
burning.
when you kissed me,
did your fingertips
feel like lightning?
No,
i guess that was
just me.
Thunder.
Shame on you for making me feel something.
Shame on me for thinking it meant something.
So
how do you feel about thunderstorms
and relationships that won’t go anywhere
poetry
and me?
The thunder is crackling now,
cackling now,
but I don’t think it’s laughing at us.
by Daniele Walker
October sixteenth
The world in which I am living
is not the world in which I woke up
this morning,
because you are not in it.
The world is not the same,
and I didn’t even get to say goodbye
to it
or to you.
This kind of sadness is how I imagine drowning like you did.
And I wonder if it hurt.
And I wonder if you were afraid.
And I wonder
if
you knew
what was coming.
And I wonder if you knew that I loved you.
by Daniele Walker
Daniele DeAngelis Walker is twenty-three years young, but her soul feels much older. An avid lover of colors and words, she graduated from Drew University with specialized honors in creative writing. She works in the publishing industry and lives in New Jersey with the fiancée she never thought she’d have.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
flibbertigibbets
on pulpits,
lucid with bliss,
gold, crimson and chartreuse,
a tricky weave
in thatched looms,
chirps tuned
to dulcet grace,
coy as they syncopate,
fragile as a drizzle
of satyrids,
murmur of aria, whirl
and frond.
fantasia of mince,
lilt-borne chimes,
troupe
of felicity,
young as breeze,
buoyant with glee,
irresistible
aerial
delectable
playful
flight.
by Chris Crittenden
Chris Crittenden writes from a struggling fishing village, fifty miles from the nearest traffic light. He is pretty well published.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
when I close my eyes,
my bones quiver like I’m
the girl I was last summer,
waking up eighteen on
the banks of the river,
four inches deep in little boys
that press themselves flush
into the creases of my barefoot callouses
it’s there:
honeysuckle, rationed
single drop by single drop,
nectar touched so gently
by our green mother
that it’s bitter to my tongue,
pressed inside my cheeks,
to bite, to knead,
sewn into silk-hewn soil
that bleeds roots from seeds,
bursting leaves like sunburst skies,
like the amber-glossed eyes
of every horse I led to water
only to never let them drink
by Alora Ray
Alora Ray is 20, temporarily lives in Northern Virginia, perpetually lives in a state of denial, performs for whimsy, writes by necessity.
