October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Social sensibilities
in the Information Age
are communicated in sound bytes,
exchanging mostly trivia
in brief, revealing detail
that neither satisfies,
nor extends relationships,
tersely structured
for minimal response
from diminutive users.
by Gary Beck
Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press). Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways (Winter Goose Publishing). Perceptions, Displays, Fault Lines and Tremors will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. Conditioned Response will be published by Nazar Look. His novels include: Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press) Acts of Defiance (Artema Press). Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing). His short story collection, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). 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 literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Of Fucking and Fleeing
I do not need
the residual bullshit of whining
Will you call me’s,
nor do I believe in the transcendent
lies of I’ll call you tomorrow’s.
Mine is a nature that learns
from past catastrophes. Names
are irrelevant. Sex is my church.
I confess
I enjoy sinning, giving
myself to another in shadows,
but I am temporary, a tangible ghost,
naked. I disappear
with an unceremonious slam before dawn.
To Kill Or Not To Kill
hasn’t been the question in years.
Who to kill is the new front runner
in my rapidly growing list of opathies.
Homicidal and suicidal are
as interchangeable as hours on a clock,
days in a week. Bitterness is
the only pill I can stand to swallow.
It covers the taste of regret
staining my tongue. I am stuck
and solidly alone in the war I wage
in my mind. I have though about changing
my name to volcano, but that implies
some elemental hope of survival.
My fissure is wider. When I break, they will
call me Pompeii. Nothing
will be left to breathe beneath my ash.
Another New Heart
He snapped his fingers and pointed at me.
He spread his hands wide, indicating
he was available. I took
out my notebook and put it on the table,
decided to start with the last chapter.
He began to tell me a story, a minimal account
I had heard before. When he finished
telling it, I nodded, made a note—
not because it was important,
but because I was trying to keep myself
breathing. He never said another word,
just dissolved into a dream I had conquered
too many times before.
by AJ Huffman
A.J. Huffman has published eleven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. Her new poetry collection, Another Blood Jet, is now available from Eldritch Press. She has three more poetry collections forthcoming: A Few Bullets Short of Home from mgv2>publishing, Degeneration from Pink Girl Ink, and A Bizarre Burning of Bees from Transcendent Zero Press. She is a Multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, and has published over 2200 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, and Kritya. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. www.kindofahurricanepress.com
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Oh, home of cracked bones,
crypt of condensed composure.
My time has arrived.
One bone, two bones, three bones, rattle my bones,
shake the box until its cobwebbed truth tumbles out
onto hard-packed dust. Shredded into ivory splinters,
you’ll find the derailed train that hurtles toward you,
only a few feet away now. Before you crash, look
closer. Find the starfish patterns that sway on my
prison’s wall and congratulate them for commendable
perseverance. Scratch the surface of the midnight air.
Breathe the chemicals that rise from your skin. Pray
to the earth, press your lips against the summer’s final
remaining blade of grass and beg release from your
bindings. Remember the last time you swallowed
a watermelon seed, and remember the first time
the winter wind clutched your umbrella, allowing
the cold to seep quietly, smoothly into your bones.
Oh, home of new bones,
crypt of condensed composure.
Your time arrives soon.
by Hannah Warren
Hannah is currently an undergraduate English major at Mississippi State University. Upon graduation, she wishes to pursue a Master in Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing; she is published in Nota Bene. She may be found rambling at inksplatteredwords.blogspot.com.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
It’s all firewood now, the scarred, splintered,
broken-apart tables, benches, and chairs piled
high far behind a country inn, all the dinner engagements
and family celebrations they’ve accommodated now firmly
past, service so demanding as to render this furniture
debris, the owner and his son, keeping a hose handy,
igniting the fire, flames swirling the mound instantly,
the crackling from within it at first spare and subdued,
then turning resonant and rhythmic as if in recitation
of its own, long, complicated story, the story of work
well done, of promises kept and promise redeemed, all
ending in this blaze through which it relives its history
of giving, the woodsmoke scent—lingering
long after the fire expires—surprisingly sweet.
by Mark Belair
Mark Belair’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Atlanta Review, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry East and The South Carolina Review. His most recent collection is Breathing Room (Aldrich Press, 2015). Previous collections include Night Watch (Finishing Line Press, 2013); While We’re Waiting (Aldrich Press, 2013); and Walk With Me (Parallel Press of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, 2012). He has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
I see corpses when I look at people
they are dancing with the past and dreaming about future
they desperately mark their territory
they scream
yelp
make noise
thinking that returning echo
will be them
or their soul
and there is silence
there is nothing
not even as much as blackness
that would have a meaning
they are standing squatting
it is very funny
one leg here
and there without a leg
by Frederick Rossakovsky-Lloyd
Frederick Herbert Rossakovsky-Lloyd lives and works in UK. He published nine volumes of poetry. His work can be found in numerous international anthologies.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
She looked into the mirror very closely
As she just combed her hair morosely.
No doubt she was extremely beautiful;
Beauty dumped on her by the merciful.
A face that could launch million ships;
Eyes that so sent men on ecstatic trips
But her life had been a crisis-series;
Crises that chronically really wearies;
A ton of poison for an ounce of gold.
She would not return to the Divine fold.
She looked into the mirror very closely
As she just combed her hair morosely.
by Rajagopal Kaimal
