April 2016 | poetry
The power saws of my childhood
sneak into the wind, great whirling
motors spitting dust, soft
and clinging to the hair of my arms,
transforming me from child
to Nordic beast, wild curls of blonde
lumber blurring my edges.
My father’s leather-pouched belt
hovers by my ear, smelling of nails
and sweat, and the chalk of a snapped line
hangs in the long air behind me, marking
the path from here to the place
where I once placed fallen screws
in a blade-scarred hand, certain
what I offered
was needed.
Alice Pettway
Alice Pettway’s work has appeared in over 30 print and online journals, including The Bitter Oleander, The Connecticut Review, Folio, Lullwater Review, Keyhole, and WomenArts Quarterly. Her chapbook, Barbed Wire and Bedclothes was published by Spire Press in 2009, and her full-length collection, The Time of Hunger | O Tempo de Chuva, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Pettway is a former Lily Peter fellow, Raymond L. Barnes Poetry Award winner, and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Currently, she lives and writes in Bogotá, Colombia.
April 2016 | poetry
It’s nice to be me
she wonders
when you do not know
what the time is
at any shade of day.
When the dreams
bring down
the leaves of scorn
blown by the bluster
of those
that know what they do.
It is so nice to be me
on my own
to walk the trails of private gardening.
I rustle round the grass
like a whisper.
In the blue forget-me-nots
that flutter in my company
Who needs people?
if you have sown
the pretty pinks
to keep the head warm and cosy
in its bed of confidence.
I am so special I know
there are places to fly
to say the crazy things I say.
Nigel Ford
Nigel was born in 1944 and started writing age 14. Jobs include reporter for The Daily Times, Lagos, Nigeria, travel writer for Sun Publishing, London, English teacher for Berlitz, Hamburg, copy writer for Ted Bates, Stockholm. Several magazines in UK and US have published his work, including Nexus, Outposts, Encounter, New Spokes, Inkshed, The Crazy Oik, Weyfarers, Acumen, Critical Quarterly, Staple, T.O.P.S, The North, Foolscap, Iota, Poetry Nottingham, and Tears in the Fence.
April 2016 | poetry
On the way to see lavender flames and bloody cow tails,
a bunny runs from beneath my car, tears in his eyes as if he had heard me
screaming inside my room minutes before
Some mornings I weep instead
Ashlie Allen
Ashlie Allen writes fiction and poetry. Her favorite book is “The Vampire Lestat” by Anne Rice. She is friends with the Green man and some other weird creatures.
April 2016 | poetry
Song
When we were together, we were not.
I was alone with you and with all the animals,
all the cherry blossoms, Chrysanthemums and
the rising sun. Is this Japan? But I’ve never been there.
Daylight is just the messenger of the secrets of
the night’s hidden and utter darkness.
Moonlight is just the reflection of the ashamed sun
and nothing else.
Twilight – the hermitage of the unholy things
squatting in the mud, waiting for dark and godly hours.
Love is a turkey when every day is Thanksgiving.
Love is cow in the slaughterhouse, bending down its
head to the ax.
The mountains stand tall and proud, talking in dead
language with the birds in the sky, resembling unknown
hieroglyphs.
Rivers flow with no time left, to the edge of
the horizon.
Logs split back into logs in the deep and still virgin
forests.
And then silence descends.
When we were together, we were not.
We tried to be something else,
but that was impossible,
because we were already completed,
and silence that descended was the end of everything.
Or it was the new beginning,
just like that moment when the orchestra conductor
stands still, before the first note of the symphony,
with its baton in the air, above his head,
and then he swings.
What is This
This is not the thing I want,
this is not the thing I don’t need,
this is not the thing that it thinks it is.
I sit on the writing table and think
about it. But at the same time I can not
think, therefore what?
The wine is decanting, my Gitanes sits unlit
in the ashtray and I watch trough the window
how the misty sadness is clearing over the grove.
I tend to take everything as it is, to make some
sense out of it, some shapeless meaning.
And I remember now how when we were with
together, everything around us would cease
existing. Maybe this is it. This everything.
The Cosmos, the Universe, the stars and nothing
else, just pure pleasure, when everything comes
to light. And it, of course, was standing between us.
And then, in fact, there was nothing but pure silence.
Peycho Kanev
Peycho Kanev is the author of 4 poetry collections and two chapbooks, published in USA and Bulgaria. He has won several European awards for his poetry and he’s nominated for the Pushcart Award and Best of the Net. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, such as: Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Front Porch Review, Hawaii Review, Barrow Street, Sheepshead Review, Off the Coast, The Adirondack Review, Sierra Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review and many others.
April 2016 | poetry
The perpendicular marks on the carpet,
Below my blistered boots, mark my path to this
Place of auditory affirmation.
The noise from the tv tells me to stop
The silence and listen to
Talking mocking teething media personalities:
I feel the hereness of hearing and for this reason,
All is perfect.
The questions my mind beckons to
Consciousness are neither new nor old but
Persistent: this steadfastness feels normal—
A salutation of life and auditory awareness.
The fortunate falls we face and fear
Hear no cries of regret but rather,
Cries of confidence that propel new-
ness and resilience.
Like the spindly carpet from the waiting room floor,
I stand still and sally my silent awakening.
Joey Kim
Joey Kim is a Ph.D. student in English at Ohio State. Her research interests include British Romantic poetry, Romantic Orientalism, gender and sexuality, and postcolonial studies. She is particularly interested in the intersections of theories of sexuality and Orientalist literatures. She earned her MA in English literature at Ohio State as well, and is currently reading for her PhD candidacy exams.
April 2016 | poetry
In dusty houses
with sallow shades
floating ghostly
past books, pictures,
broken furniture
unconnected
disengaged
Functional rubble
of teeth, knees, hips,
skipping the charters to Branson,
afternoon performances
of Hamlet
writing in their journals
how the view from the end of the road
mirrors the view from the beginning:
a thoughtless line
vining to mind,
a heart of treetops,
vanishing unsurprised
through the floorboards.
Craig Evenson
Craig Evenson is a school teacher. His poems have appeared in such magazines as Lalitamba, Midwest Quarterly, and Common Ground Review. He lives in Minnesota.
