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
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
The images of school children
Dead
Arms up
Like they are resting
Stars
Everywhere
In the wreckage of a
Great plane
With burning rubble
And skin
I am now weakened
And dulled
So much that I do not
Feel a thing
At the site of this
Carnage
Focusing instead
On my performance
Metrics
And rhythms of
Holiday planning
And school breaks
And oil changes
“Nothing new
To look at
Here”
The signs read
I acquiesce
And turn my head
Down
To focus on lines
In the pavement
by Morgan Bazilian
Morgan Bazilian is a short story writer and poet based in Dublin, Ireland, and Telluride, Colorado. His poetry has appeared in: Exercise Bowler, Pacific Poetry, Angle Poetry, Dead Flowers, Poetry Quarterly and Innisfree. His stories have been published in Eclectica, South Loop Review, Embodied Effigies, Shadowbox, Slab, and Glasschord.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
rails ascend into gray pneumonic sky
but infinity is not allowed,
cars rush to fall off the edge of sight,
the wind chants with keening gulls
above the bay slap, chopping, cutting at the base,
rip my head clear,
carve yesterday on a stone thrown
to plunge down half seen
and then gone in the sea-haze
before the concrete ribbon hits the hills
I peer seeing sky sheets tossed used and wet
and her skin rising, falling,
her Judas breath trapped by the rhythm
of the pillars stiff over the green estuary,
the thrall broken by sun’s late-day fire
as the nav commands
turn to Paradise Drive,
there the white tablecloth is gilded,
the blooded wine arrives for fugue-rites,
I drink, trading masters,
I swallow to cross to another land.
by Bruce Bagnell
After Bruce Bagnell received his bachelor’s in English from Fairleigh Dickinson University, he went on to earn his master’s from John F. Kennedy University. Throughout the years Bruce has worked as a cook, mechanic, and college professor; held various management positions; and was a USAF captain in Vietnam. Now retired, he focuses wholeheartedly on his writing and has been published in Zone 3, Westview, OmniVerse, The Scribbler, The Round, Blue Lake Review, Crack the Spine, The Griffin, Oxford Magazine, The Alembic, Studio One, and several online magazines. Bruce is a member of the Bay Area Poets Coalition and has twice been awarded honorable mention in their Maggi H. Meyer Memorial Poetry Contest.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
The woman taking my baby’s information
over the phone asks if I have postpartum
depression. I have no idea, I just want to know
how my reality has become Tucks pads slapped
down in underwear like slices of bologna
and a bra holding rock-hard porn-star tits.
Everything is breasts. My husband’s eyes, English
muffin halves, Katie Couric’s saucer. The nightly
sputter of the heater, a breast pump. At dawn,
it groans “Screw you. Screw you. Rat poo.” Regret
for not saving stem cells dangles in the Pottery Barn
mobile and every two hours a gurgling stream
of milk from my nipples shoots me awake.
In the nursing chair I recount the ludicrous
contortions between contractions that made
the midwife snort “That eighteen-wheeler plowing
through your uterus, that’s nothing special
happens every day,” while she typed
on her Blackberry. Yet we will do it again.
Forget the moment our vagina, butane-doused
and lit, tore open into the newest scalp on the planet.
Wish to vomit crackers while two hearts
beat inside us.
by Marcia LeBeau
Marcia LeBeau has been published in Handsome Journal, Poemeleon, Inertia Magazine, and others. She received an honorable mention for the Rattle Poetry Prize. She has attended various workshops with writers such as Sharon Olds, Tony Hoagland, Charles Harper Webb, Molly Peacock, Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux, and more. Marcia’s poems have appeared in Oprah’s O Magazine and have been read on the radio. She holds an MFA in poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts’ creative writing program. Marcia has played the violin/viola since she was four, and now plays in chamber groups. She is slightly addicted to self-help seminars and can be found cooking when she’s in a good mood.
