Cinnamon

April 2013 | back-issues, poetry

A spicy seam, unraveled in a café, brunette with streaks. Jittering fingers unstitch brown and red; a smell like mad-heat buried in cheeks, flesh wild and fever-drenched. His lips are swollen on warm treats, but he stretches the peppered vein and drinks.

 

by Janae Green

 

Janae Green is a recipient of the 2nd Annual Gypsy Sachet Awards in Letters and Biography from Fiction Fix. Her poems and short stories have appeared in Atticus Review, Eunoia Review, Fiction Fix, Paper Darts, Poetry Quarterly, scissors and spackle, The Ofi Press, The Salmon Creek Journal, Turk’s Head Review, and forthcoming in various online and print literary journals. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her partner, artist Shea Bordo.

Wabi-Sabi

April 2013 | back-issues, poetry

Technically, you’re doing a poor job. You have no form.

The hatchet flails down into the uprooted stump.

The beagle howls. George Williams, Mr. Horton, Hilliary,

and the other neighbors spring up in their beds.

The dog’s mug and paws clatter the chain-link fence

like an ambitious kid assigned to the chimes in music class

sweeping the tiny stick over the metal bars

in gloriously abrupt, halted, and sped up glissandos

that out perform the glockenspiels and make the triangle feel

even more alone and pointless.

 

Despite the fact that everyone you saw yesterday seemed

so much happier than you, don’t you feel a bit better right now?

Your work may achieve what the Roshis speak of: 

Wabi-sabi in the stump. Perfection in imperfection—

gashes si-goggly like fallen trees in a forest

or the green of moss glowing on anything when it’s grey out,

or the hatchet tilted in the corner of your living room

and your decision to take a night off of listening to Stereolab

on opium, and going out back to shave,

whittle, chop, and cut at a piece of hickory.

The neighbors’ kitchen lights flick on,

visored faces against the windows.

 

by Noah Burton

 

Jacob Valadez

April 2013 | back-issues, poetry

bikes

 

she is all the red square cathedrals

dipped in honey.

krasnaya, they say archaically.

to my ancient soul

she is an lp’s grooves, that smile

upon fresh rained pavement or,

gliding under the silvery stars,

cosmos borealis.

 

she rode her turquoise bike away

on a rainy day near the end of the world.

she had an empty wire basket on the rusted front.

  

five of us

 

we’re them’s enabler,

so the dealt is done.

 

burrow deep our friends,

the sun is hot salt.

 

them doesn’t like us,

like grapes who eats one?

 

we knew magic. them

died, smothered from love.

 

i, in time

 

i read somewhere that time

   or their time or her time so

   this magnificent quote, i thought


  was not the same to any one person

 and when i came across

 i should take my time

 how my time was different from your time

   caught on a crisp autumn breeze and no more

 slip by the most fluidly, scarves

   and live for the times that seem to

 subject to time than am i.

 

run away wheel

 

pitter patter, pink matter,

can you hear the hamster breathe?

pretty lights up resuscitation’s reach

tunnel’s end beyond reasoning up

throw god shaped lightning bolts control-

ed by a rodent spinning out of sight.

 

pity stares past sight,

look, pay attention, hamster matter-

s aren’t about control,

but correcting the way you breathe

and blank and bring up

how Reich sounds three things away from reach.

 

hamsters race along sulci reach-

ing down into depths, sight-

ing scopes to clean up

rainbows of red and red matter

that chokes, rainbow roots breathe

for you. what lies? control.

 

you have black holes in you that control

singular processes like when you reach

deep in your lungs for air, breathe

in singularities hamsters see under a microscope’s sight

so they can tell how the dark matter-

s. so please hurry up.

 

hipster hamsters know what’s up,

but up can be down if the control

room gets messed up, what’s the matter

with death riding bengal tigers that reach

for food that’s not a sight

unseen in a neuronal ocean that can breathe.

 

hello house. hello hal. just breathe

pops, read something to keep up

the spirits bought in a paper bag sight-

ed by cops dressed as hamsters who control-

s how now? brown cows reach

for golden status to be false matter.

 

vital is breathe you while mind in kept, matter

that hamsters own your to up sanity for try a, reach

than perfect more sight no knows control

 

small birds

 

i am sitting at the top of a building in the rain

there is always the now if the then was kept forgotten

the cold salt 

a small bird wakes in the nest

eyes open

i like his skin too cool

the small bird cries out on the edge of the nest as the wind whips around

my heart is pattering and he sees it

i am he and he is i

it patters in time with the rain

harder and harder like the ground the bird hits

i lose them to rain down on him and he feels their sound

the pattering heart holds me still and devours me

the shadow deafens him to the birds song

the skin too cool reaches me and I am fed

i am the bird

i am the man

now i can lie like the birds and their young 

 

by Jacob Valadez

 

Mr. Valadez is an aspiring writer who is currently attending the University of California San Diego as an undergraduate.

Drunk Dream

April 2013 | back-issues, poetry

You and me and brightness

You and me and pink and

Purple widening circles.

 

The pale skin on your neck,

That red cowlick like Tin Tin’s,

Your eyes, wide and blue.

 

Someone sings in a high,

Clear voice. We come close

To kissing, but don’t.

 

by Catherine Simpson

 

Catherine Simpson is a cellist who lives in Santa Barbara. She has been previously published in the Big River Poetry Review, Right Hand Pointing, Spectrum, Step Away Magazine, and Into the Teeth of the Wind. 

Samantha Seto

April 2013 | back-issues, poetry

Waterfall

 

Breaking before our eyes into a sound,

as whoosh and swish of the ocean tide.

In constant as rhythmic strokes

branches crack and are thrown into the stream.

 

I stood among the trees and watched,

immobile in the cooling shade,

the leaf surfaced, face up beneath the bridge.

Woooh, the wind howled,

 

Cut limbs falling, the crack they make,

each dropping from its trunk as though for once

the last branch of winter made us trim.

 

Lost for violence of mid-air branches,

soft current dragged on as wind chimes

blew at the stretch of the dam.

 

Wading water into land, downward

as the deep blue sea, at times where

the light reflected a bend.

 

Slowed the surface calm waters,

evergreen trees lined the banks of river,

as natural forces contained the seed of life.

 

Collapse

 

The windows are blown out.

Abandonment offers silence,

our yard grown wildly immeasurable

in green, red, yellows, and browns.

 

Long recollection of a story roars out.

Sagging doors creak, left ajar, stuck in hinges,

we meet halfway.

 

Closing the door to those that left for good,

ways of going away, leaving our forsaken home.

 

We used to have our meals and slept upstairs,

the wooden floor makes hisses at us.

 

Spiral staircase leads us nowhere now,

quiet whispers we murmured before bed,

shhh – everything is truly silent.

 

by Samantha Seto

 

Samantha Seto is a writer. She has been published in various anthologies including Ceremony, Soul Fountain, Blue Hour, Carcinogenic Poetry, and Black Magnolias Journal.

dysthymia

April 2013 | back-issues, poetry

you are

the spring in my limp
the depth of my shallow breaths
the shattered melancholy
of my being broken

memories
from before I knew you
sweet smoke
my dad loved to hide behind
dark eyes of an early crush
summertime grass warm
against my bare feet
first real kiss

black-veiled mourner
standing alone
beneath gray rain
clenching teeth and fist
dropping muddy earth
into my grave
smearing what’s left
across your face
hiding your crying
downcast eyes

enduring the disappointment

 

in all that I am not 

 

by Danny Earl Simmons

 

Danny Earl Simmons is an Oregonian and a proud graduate of Corvallis High School. He is a friend of the Linn-Benton Community College Poetry Club and an active member of Albany Civic Theater. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals such as Naugatuck River Review, Avatar Review, Burningword, Pirene’s Fountain, and Verse Wisconsin.