January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
We used to be small, with many a great care
taking cover from comrades, waiting to give chase
Seeking the monsters of our youth
attics, closets, beds, basements
– better we find them, than they us
Rain’s worms and snow’s angels,
the business of those quarters
Feared only were the fatherly scold
the playground rebuke and the motherly palm
in a time when the doubts of giants trickled down to our crowns
like raindrops upon ants
Now we roam as giants
much too tall to gaze upon the insects
whom we frolicked with once upon a time
and our tears have matured
They will plunge toward our heirs, threaten to drown them
unless they learn quickly to amend
and mirror the tread of their keepers
From ours we fled
Two wheel commute carrying us far from our jobs
of holding no agenda, but instead faceless grudges –
then unnamed
fated to revisit in adult slumber and
despite all,
keep us from remembering what we then could not see…
were still less complicated times
Patrick Battle has been previously published in the Garland Court Review (2010) and from 2007 to 2008. He worked as a columnist and staff writer for Northern Star, Northern Illinois University’s daily print publication with a circulation of 15,000 and is currently pursuing an Associate’s degree in Journalism at Harold Washington College in Chicago, IL.
January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
O capricious heart
Make me the miracle
That in choir of love’s opus knells deeply
Sharp as piercing awe
Like eyes perched in windows of a face
Gleaming with the hymn of sharing candles
Kindled in a liturgical flicker of the other
—Remi’el Ki
January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Winterscape: Crow vs Snow
Like billions of dark butterflies
Beating their wings
Against nightmares, rather
Like myriads of
Spirited coal-flakes
Spread from the sky
Of another world
A heavy black snow
Falls, falling, fallen
Down towards the horizon
Of my mind, where a little crow
White as a lost patch
Of autumn fog
Is trying hard to flap, flying
From bough to bough
Zeugmatic America: A Parallel Poem
Every time you stage a play or an election in your own yard
You cannot wait to shake hands with your audiences and their wealth
No matter whether it is the passage of a new bill or an old dilemma
You excel particularly at manipulating public will and private property
With your weeping eyes and hands
You keep waging war and peace far beyond your boundaries
While you kill non-Americans and their hope together
To turn all others and othernesses into biblical dust
More often than not, you selfish intentions prove
Much more destructive than your smart bombs
You invisible fighter jets strike far farther
Than your visible arms of peace effort
You are simply too great for a small criticism
Too super-powerful for a weak opposition
Too democratic for a totalitarian competition
And too single-minded for a double standard
Changming Yuan, author of Chansons of a Chinaman and 4-time Pushcart nominee, grew up in rural China and published several monographs before moving to North America. Currently Yuan teaches in Vancouver and has had poetry appearing in over 400 literary publications worldwide, including Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, Best New Poems Online, Cortland Review, Exquisite Corpse and RHINO.
January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
His shrinking humiliation blistered in the sun.
You raise your nose at him
but I’ve seen you,
I’ve seen you digging trough the dumpsters,
hissing at spectators as they laugh at your misfortune.
Lean in close and listen to the clicking
of the kitchen clock. Maddening, isn’t it?
All of your mental calculations are letting you
down, aren’t they?
These are nights of love and laughter
followed by days of unapologetic
loneliness.
You stare at the dirty wine glasses
filling your sink as if you’re the only one
who feels empty on a daily basis.
Cliff Weber is 25 years-old and lives in Los Angeles. He has self-published three books, “Matzo Ball Soup” in 2009, “Jack Defeats Ron 100-64” in 2010 and “Remain Frantic” in 2011. His work has appeared in Adbusters, Out of Our, Burning Word, Bartleby Snopes and Young American Poets, among others. Weber is currently in need of a book publisher.
January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Week or so after Hurricane Hazel,
Me, just out of the Navy, no job.
Mac, one year out of Walter Reed.
My dad (looking out for us) Bunch
Of trees down at Curtis Arboretum,
Township needs help cleaning up.
Couple of axes. hatchet, sharpening
stone, file and coffee thermos.
A two-man bucking saw, Mac and me
We waded into tangled branch mess
Hatchet, axes swing, bite, chips fly
Branches slap — sweat stings eyes
Sun, leaves, sawdust everywhere.
Axe blades sticky, saw teeth clogged,
Sap-stiff gloves, blistered hands
Buck-sawing oak, maple, walnut
Sycamore — some we didn’t know.
Logs piled by road for dump truck
We cashed checks, drank beer.
Papers said the storm killed
Thousands, Haiti to Toronto.
Mac died, Halloween Day 2008.
Hit by northbound car on Rte. 611
Happened fast like Hurricane Hazel.
Mac had his troubles; he was lucky
Got out of this life quick-like
Now, nobody’s on saw’s other end.
Fifty-four years done and gone.
George Fleck is a graduate of Temple University, Philadelphia Pa., and a Korean War Veteran. He has been writing poetry for fourteen years. His work has appeared in Commomweath: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, Penn State Press 2005, Mad Poets Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and online in “Poets Against The War.”
January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
#1
He walks
On the road made of nothingness
Paved with bodies of dead wishes
He walks tacitly
Invisibly
I’m pretending to be a Star
On his sky
To be the Sun and the Moon
He walks
Not looking up…
Marija Stajic is a writer and journalist who has been published by The New Yorker and many other online and print publications, and who has published three books of poetry. She has a B.A. in Linguistics from Faculty of Philosophy, University of Nis (Serbia) and an M.A. in International Journalism from American University.
