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.
October 2015 | poetry
I wanted the ghostliness of Fall,
the thrill of fresh masks
and hard candy
I wanted the romance of arguing,
the depression of school nights
and dim lamp lights
I wanted the abuse of painful side affects,
the fascination of my shadow
within a crowd,
the excitement of loneliness
I wanted the pleasure of demons,
the euphoria of erotic bonding,
the exhaustion of sadness
I wanted the love of parents,
the horror of sour nails,
the joy of intentionally sore skin
I wanted the relief of exhaling,
the weakness of flu season,
the peace of floating away
I fell asleep on black hair
and woke up inside a blonde tea pot
I was served to the earth unsweetened,
every ounce of me disgusting
by Ashlie Allen
Ashlie Allen writes fiction and poetry. She is also a photographer. Her work has appeared in the Tipton Poetry Journal, Gone Lawn, Spelk and others. She loves the Victorian era.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
And down the road I look
at Winchester on the Severn, the setting
star glaring amber as ochre-sweet
honey spoils with jaundiced age
in November. I stand on the hill
quietly knowing my life
will be unusual, different from how
(and now) it was then. Déjà vu―
my wood-shingled boyhood
home, the mint patch and Pines Park,
ghosts of the elm trees which met
overhead when Rt. 2 was B&A.
When dusk enfolds the arbor, mourning
doves sense the mist thinning. No
significance or scaffold in mind:
just a fouling wood and winter
looming in labor, heaped on planks
of limp, listless light.
by Zane Anthony
Zane is a senior at Middlebury College, studying architecture and biology. Zane’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Star Democrat, Middlebury Magazine, Sweatervest, and Zenith Magazine, and is forthcoming in other journals.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
a promise and a secret
written in stone
clutched like a dying heart
a life untethered
in the loveless ether
neither held
nor hoped for
too painful to remember
too impossible to forget
an anomaly of dark matter
gone supernova
between the rock of truth
and the hard place of hurt
nerves exposed in stars’ ignition
transmissions muted
space at a standstill
for it is
both now…
and never again.
by Edward Canavan
Edward L. Canavan (January 19, 1971 – ) is an American poet whose work has been published in such underground and revolutionary journals as Bleeding Hearts, Vice and Verse, Eagle’s Flight, and Oxford Comma. He currently resides in a small room by the freeway in North Hollywood, Ca.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Experiment in Weightlessness
Upside down fishbowl
occupant
right side up
tablecloths like spiraling
butterflies
brown lace-up shoe
a woman’s
random receipts brochures
sticky notes
last year’s desk calendar
curling uncurling
a glowing suspended instant
strangers on the ledge
faces averted
unwilling to witness
the tragedy of
scorched birds in flight.
The Power
I plant thoughts in your head,
walk a mile in your shoes
and leave you to wonder
where all that sand came from.
You once accused me of being
all talk and no action,
but you would tremble with fear
if you could see me now.
Magic dances on my fingertips,
sparks crackle in my hair.
I cook my meals these days
without ever going near the stove.
I just sear chunks of flesh
with the heat of my regard.
By Jeffrey Park
Jeffrey Park’s poetry has appeared most recently in Star*Line, phantom kangaroo, Mad Swirl, and Danse Macabre. A native of Baltimore, Jeffrey currently lives in Goettingen, Germany, where he is lecturer for Scientific English at the Georg-August-Univeritaet. Links to all of his published work can be found at www.scribbles-and-dribbles.com.
